James Parsons is a senior lecturer in politics at the University of Manchester.
This was taken on just like that.
Have if you think of the scenes in the area, humanitarian intervention, responsibility to protect the ethics of war,
the increased use of private military security companies, which is the subject not only of performance going to get today.
Of course, the last time the subjects of the book, which will be published next year with Oxford University Press.
So yeah, his book, Humanitarian Intervention and Responsible to Protect Who Should Intervene,
was published in 2010 by AP and got the notable Book Award in 2011 for the International Studies Association International Ethics Section.
He's come on paper for a copy, go get one, because there's a new focus on Libya,
as you see his focus on human intervention and got the Ernest Booker Prize for best dissertation in fiscal theory on political studies.
The situation is published the first articles on the ethics of force and currently working with four volume major work on humanitarian interventions,
is also working on the second monograph on national issues, a study sort of this issue of possible funders and private security companies.
Now today I'm going to take place because this fits very strongly with more things that we have to change of heart war, not just about let's change.
You're uncomfortable already, have you understand what we talked about last week.
But this we're not losing sight of these ethical, moral dimensions of techniques and technology.
So just think about what's coming through resumes. Okay. Thanks very much.
So my background is in political theory. In political theory tends to produce handouts.
If you don't produce handouts, then you're not regarded as a proper political theory.
So I've got handouts and PowerPoint and other exactly the same information is on both.
So you can either look at the handouts from the handouts or you can you can look at me from PowerPoint.
So I've just set those guys back. So. What I'm going to talk about today is, as Rob said,
my recently completed manuscripts on the ethical issues surrounding the use of private military and security companies.
So PMC for sure. And so what I try and do in the book, in short, is consider the central normative objections to private pension security.
Come these and bring these all together to provide an overall assessment of the case for and against their use.
Now, the way that I'm going to structure the talk is I'm going to give in the first half a brief overview of the whole book.
Now, it won't be possible to do justice or or to discuss in any satisfactory manner the overall arguments of the book and to develop my case,
you know, in 40, 45 minutes.
So what I'm going to do is just give a brief overview in the first half and then the second half focus on one particular set of issues.
And the issues that I'm going to concentrate on are those to do with the issues with individuals, with individual contractors.
And these are the issues that one I've kind of discussed this topic with people previously.
These are ones that people are often just most interested in. So I thought that's what I'd focus on.
Okay, so let me start then by giving a bit of a brief overview of the book.
Now I expect that most of you have a fairly decent understanding or some background knowledge of the privatisation of military force.
I'm not going to go into this in great detail. I'm not in both houses here.
But instead I want to make a few more introductory clarifications. 3.33 inspections are taking place.
So first of all, I'm going to say something about the scale of PMC use.
In Iraq and Afghanistan in particular. Now, this has been immense.
The total number of D.O.D. contracts is pegged to approximately 163,000 in Iraq in September 2028 and 117,000 in Afghanistan in 2012.
Now, these figures from the U.S. Congressional Research Service are only D.O.D. contractors, so only four Department of Defence contractors.
The total number of contractors would be even greater when you consider other agencies and other states employing these firms.
So the scale is huge. But it should be made clear that it should be made clear that this doesn't mean that there are or have been hundreds
of thousands of American security contractors running around Iraq and Afghanistan as as often depicted in the media.
So although much of the focus is being on security contractors and particularly on security contractors,
these are, in fact a relatively small part of the industry.
In March 2011, security contractors comprised about 18% of the DOD contractors in Afghanistan and Iraq.
By far, the largest part of the industry are those that concern logistical services, and these tend to receive a lot less attention.
So logistical services services include things such as the setting up of bases,
food production, delivery, sanitation and laundry, laundry and so on and so forth.
In addition, the vast majority of contractors, including security contractors, all American operators in Iraq and Afghanistan.
I saw it in Iraq, whereas my figures are 85% of security contractors were what are called tickets.
So third country nationals in Afghanistan, 95% of security contractors with local national service Afghanis.
Afghanistan is. So that's something just about the scale and a bit about the background of the industry.
Now let me say something about the definition of private military and security companies, because these always come up.
I think it's important to be very clear what it is we're actually talking about here.
So I'd like to find them premises of private funds that provide military aid or security
services that involve or assist the use of force beyond the borders of their own client,
of their own or their clients. Political community. I'll pick out three important features of this definition.
Firstly, since promises are funds, this means that they are for profits.
Second, since they are private actors, they are separate independent actors.
So not part of the regular military or the state. And the third is that they are to some extent, transnational.
Now private contractors are simply on my account. Those who work for penises say they don't.
They may not necessarily possess some of the defining features.
Appendices. And this is going to be important to get into the second part of the paper.
So private contractors don't necessarily need to be for profit, if you like, so they don't need to intend to make a profit.
And they might not necessarily be motivated by financial concerns.
Second, they might not be separate from the regular military, but rather they might moonlights from the regular military as this as has happens.
I thought they don't need to be foreign as as we've already seen.
Now, in similar vein, I'm going to view regular soldiers, simply those that are employed by the regular military.
So as such, the difference between private contractors and regular soldiers doesn't hang on any account of personal characteristics,
such as the motivation or nationality. What's important is who the employers actually are.
Mm hmm. Now. On this account on the on this definition,
there isn't a strong difference between private military and security companies and mercenary organisations.
So there isn't an analytically or analytically necessary or a categorical difference between mercenaries and premises,
despite various accounts in the literature and various industry attempts to claim that there are.
There is, I think, a degree of difference. So premises are more likely to be professional, more like to be corporate,
and more like to provide a wider range of services than traditional accounts of military mercenaries.
But mercenary organisations still seem to have the same defining features of being intending to make a profit,
being separate from their regular military and being to some extent, transnational.
Okay. Third introductory point. It's worth noting that the use of panaceas, especially in that time, especially in the past,
has at times been subject to quite extensive negative media coverage on the court.
I'm sure a lot of you have seen this. So the criticism tended to focus around four related problems.
The first is that premises are ineffectively regulated,
and that is to say there is not an effective system of national or international laws to govern their use.
The second problem is a number of contractors have been alleged they're involved in the violations of civilians, human rights.
And this has been exacerbated by the apparent lack of effective accountability to prosecute those who commit wrongdoing.
So one very widely reported incident was in this square in central Baghdad in 2007,
where Blackwater employees allegedly opened fire on civilians, killing 70.
And there's yet to be a successful prosecution of those involved.
The third problem throughout the lack of competitiveness of the industry and the integrity of the bidding processes and the full problem
surrounds a lack of government oversight and proper number of insufficient number of contract offices to oversee these capacities.
Now, these very well-documented problems have led to some initiatives to improve the accounts of pregnancy appliances and contractors,
to improve contract procedures and their oversight.
So the has been some, albeit limited, improvements in the way that the US in particular and to a lesser degree the UK have been using contractors.
More recently, the industry, along with various states,
have developed the International Code of Conduct to govern PMC, which is a form of industry self-regulation.
Now notwithstanding these various efforts. There is, I think, tends to be unquestioned.
The more basic issue of whether private military force is a morally acceptable way for a state to organise its armed forces.
And there seems to be a general acquiescence that premises are here to stay
and that the use of PMCs in certain roles has gone increasingly unquestioned.
No. I think for a fuller assessment of the case for and against premises, it's necessary to go beyond simply considering these for more well document.
For more well documented problems surrounding oversight and accountability.
It requires consideration of some more fundamental issues which ultimately, I think,
lie at the light, the heart of the case for and against the use of premises.
And these include things such as the alleged mercenary motives of private contractors, the use of PMCs to circumvent democratic control.
The issues of energy inequality and access to security created by market force.
The effects of a market proposal on international instability and the efficacy, desirability and meaning of a stated monopoly on force.
So in the book, what I try and do is consider these concerns the more well documented problems,
but also consider some of the more fundamental issues as well. And to do this, I divide the analysis into three levels.
So the first concerns the employees of private military force and focuses on the just the viability of being employed by PNAC.
And these are where you find some of the most vociferous objections to private military force, such as those famously advanced by Machiavelli.
So they often revolve around the claims that individuals are involved in private military forces depraved,
that brutal, that merciless fight for only for financial gain with little concern for who their employer is.
Now, if there is something to these objections, then it would seem that there'd be really serious reasons to oppose these appendices.
And that's because the individuals involved in the practice would be doing something wrong.
So the contractors have the right to use in the system military force or the strong reasons
to hold the only regular soldiers permissible to use lethal force or assist lethal force.
And these are the issues that I'm going to focus on in the second part of the paper.
Now the second level concerns the employees of private military force and focuses on the just the viability of employing premises.
The issues that arise at this level include most fundamentally whether employing premises threatens the legitimacy of the state.
So sometimes it's argued that states or other actors undermine the social contract when they employ premises
because it should be citizen soldiers that do the fighting themselves as part of their civic responsibility.
Now in the book, I largely reject these claims and argue that premises don't fundamentally threaten legitimacy of the state.
I argue that issues to do with effectiveness, democratic control, the treatment of military personnel and criminal liability,
criminal solidarity give us reason in general to doubt the rectitude of using premises.
So that's the second level to do with employers. The third level is the international,
and this concerns the more diffuse collective effects of the privatisation of military force on the
international system and potential negative and even positive externalities of a market for force.
So what I mean by this are things such as the potential for the market for force, leading to greater circumvention of the formal constraints on war,
such as international laws, and the more informal constraints such as the prevailing norms that we have in the international system.
For instance, Pemex often alleged to lead to more proxy wars.
And I also argue I argue that I also argue that these appear misses in the market for ports can undermine criminal security within
societies and decrease increased disorder in the international system by making it much easier for other states to resort to force.
So my central claim is that private military force raises problems at all levels and should generally be assumed now.
In making this claim, I votes for things and I'll briefly run through this.
First, deeper and contingent problems.
So certain theorists and industry analysts argue that although there are some problems with the use of premises,
if there were an adequate system of regulation put in place, there would be little wrong with their use.
That is, there is nothing deeply problematic about the use of premises or that we simply need to do is sort out the current regulation of them.
Now I challenge this argument. I argue that in addition to some of the more obvious contingent problems, the other dimensions,
the use of premises poses some more fundamental moral concerns which ultimately give us reason to prefer public false.
Now, I should say something about the strength of what I'm saying here, so I don't claim that these are a poor or immoral problems.
What I mean by that is they're not necessary to all contractors and are not unique to all.
They're not unique to premises and contractors. Rather, there are objections that would apply.
Even the premises were effectively regulated by a system of national or international regulation.
And these are often the sorts of objections that I run, the objections more generally that you find against markets in other basic services,
such as against halal markets, for health markets, for education, and include issues of motivation.
The fact that contractors can't be easily compelled to fight,
can't be so easily compelled to fight wars and operations and the undermining of communal cohesiveness by commodities provision.
So that's the first thing. There are about different contingent problems.
Now, second thing I argue is that despite these notable problems, it can be permissible,
all things considered, some sometimes sometimes to use premises.
And this in particular is when they use with limits extremely beneficial consequences.
So I'm not presenting an absolutist case that says you can never use them, because I think that would be far too strong.
So you might conceive of, say, a humanitarian crisis and the UN is looking to try and launch a military operation.
Most states are willing to provide logistical support. It can hire PMC to do so despite all the various problems with premises.
I think there are the extremely beneficial consequences in this case would outweigh those other considerations.
The third theme is that I argue for a global public monopoly on the provision and authorisation
of military force in order to respond fully to the challenges posed by not only PMCs,
but also the statist system of military force.
And fourthly, I argue that we need to rethink some of the existing frameworks on the ethics of war.
I think there are some seats down here if you.
So for one, I suggest that the privatisation of the military force and the predominance of individual contracts and the high level of subcontracting.
Demonstrates that collective response to collectivist responses to individualistic, reductionist approaches to just war theory largely,
largely failed, ensure the rise of premises provides more risks to the revisionist just war theorists mill.
More generally,
I argue that considering issues that debate the private privatisation of military force shows that just war theory needs to consider issues.
The theory, the legitimacy of the military, the military undertaken the war.
So whereas we've got traditional categories of views that BLM and yes.
Symbolised we don't tend to consider.
When considering the particular case for a war or what's going on during a war.
This is the theory with who's actually doing the fighting.
And what I suggest is that in antebellum terms, a war could potentially be even worse if it's,
say, fought by patsies or conscript army than an all volunteer force.
Okay. So that's a brief overview of the whole book.
I know that's quite a lot to cover and it's very difficult to do justice to it in a short space of time.
So what I want to do now is focus in particular level on the issues to do with the individuals and private military force.
So I'm going to focus on whether it's permissible to be a contractor, so whether it's okay to be a contractor.
And if so, what? I'm to do this. I'm going to consider the three leading objections to being a private contractor.
I'm not going to say that these objections failed to establish that it's morally wrong to be a private contractor.
But I do highlight the contractors need to meet certain restrictions.
Towards the end, I'm going to say that these restrictions are even greater than those for regular soldiers.
Okay. So to start with, and what I call the violation of human rights objects and the whole you alluded to
this and this is one of the most vociferous and commonly encountered objections.
So, for instance, Enrico Ballesteros, who used to be the U.N. special rapporteur on mass tourism,
said that mercenaries based on comparative advantage and greater efficiency on the
fact that they don't regard themselves as being bound to respect human rights,
the rules of international human law,
greater distain for human dignity and greater cruelty are often considered efficient instruments for winning the fight.
More precisely, the objection is that the de facto immunity for certain contractors removes a major disincentive to commit abuses.
So as I've already indicated, there are numerous allegations of human rights abuses by PMC personnel in Iraq.
Now. I don't buy this objection. I think there's an obvious problem with that.
And this this is that it doesn't show that there's anything wrong with being a private contractor.
All that is simply required is for a contractor not to violate civilians human rights.
So contractors who don't violate civilian human rights would not be subject to this objection.
So there's nothing at least inherently problematic about being a contractor on this objection.
Moreover, I think it's clear that most contractors don't go.
I could at least commit violations of human rights.
So I don't think that this objects and provides a presumptive objection to contractors either.
So it's not something that we can presume that generally applies. So I don't think this one has much force.
Let me now turn to what I call the state's objection.
And the state's objection says that there's something simply wrong with having the status of being a contract.
So.
So there's something wrong with the very the very essence of being a private contractor, but being someone that can go to war as a private individual.
Now this objection has a bit more prima facie plausibility. I'm not going to consider it in a bit more detail.
It's been most substantively defended by Adam Perel, who's a legal theorist,
including a very recent paper in a leading philosophy journal of Philosophy of Public Affairs.
Now, Harel argues that private contractors lack the permission to use force since they aren't public agents,
they act on their own private judgement about whether to go to war.
According to Harel,
private sanctions soldiers such as those apparently required in private prisons that he also considers by private contractors are impermissible.
This is because in such circumstances, private individuals are required to act on their own judgement.
Yet, he argues the parts of conflict to inflict criminal sanctions or to go to war is what he calls an agent dependent power.
And that can be only successfully exercised by the state.
Now he thinks this objection applies even when private actors such as those involved in private prisons or Princes al-Masri,
for purposes, follow the state's orders and comply with its decisions.
Now to substantiate his case, he gives the following example.
A public official asks you to participate in the infliction of criminal sanctions against the convicted criminal.
In this case, you are required to consider as a private citizen the justify bility of your imposition of sanctions on the individual.
Now for Pharrell, this is really problematic because the public authorisation of the action isn't exclusively an execution of the will of the state,
but is rather dependent on your own private judgement about whether to actually inflict sanctions.
And for this reason he thinks it would be impermissible. It depends on your own private judgement rather than that of the state.
And so he thinks it would infringe the autonomy of those subjects, of the sanctions.
By contrast, the things that public officials possess special role base duties to enforce the state's decisions without exercising any discretion.
So the central objection that he pressed is against private contractors then is that they
need to make private judgements rather than simply enforcing the will of the state.
Now. I'm not persuaded by this argument.
And here's the reason why. It seems that this argument is too strong in saying that regular soldiers are not sometimes required to act
on their own private judgements about whether to go to war or whether to question whether their war meets.
The start of the council of say you set about just war theory to.
I accept that soldiers may sometimes have role base duties to give significant weight to what their state says.
So being a soldier might provide them with quite a significant number of reasons to accept.
As a general point, what their state or their commanding officer says,
regardless of the contents of this report, regardless of the content of the commands.
In technical language, there's a pro tanto content, independent duty to obey.
Now. It seems too strong, however, to say that there is an in the feasible reason why,
an absolute reason for regular soldiers always to follow the dictates of the state regardless of what it commands.
Sometimes the role, basically the role based duties of soldiers may outweigh the duties not to participate in the war.
And what they based on their private judgement, just judge unjust.
Yeah. Other times this won't be the case.
So sometimes I think regular soldiers are required to go along with what their own private judgement says that they should do.
So I'll give you an example. Suppose that there's a regular soldier, let's call him.
Fred joins the army of the Democratic state that tends to fight just wars.
The greater resources of the state to access the justice of the law.
And the fact that it is going to be democratically authorised by this nice democratic state gives further potential content.
Independent reason. A general reason, if you like, to fight any war ordered by the state.
But doesn't seem to follow that this consideration always outweighs the case for Fred acting on his own private judgement.
So a particular war might contravene Fred's deeply held moral or religious convictions.
Or Fred might have access to particular information that the proposed war is going to be unjust.
Say he speaks to a friends who works intelligence services and so forth.
Alternatively, although Fred's state may be likely to fight just what is in most cases a particular war,
this particular war may still be unlikely to be just.
And Fred's refusal to participate in it might not do anything to actually harm the military.
So it might. Nor can it persuade other others in the future to take a similar role as it did to take a similar position.
So my point is that both private contractors and regular soldiers are permitted and sometimes required to act on their own private judgement.
And so I guess, Carol, there isn't a major categorical difference here.
The argument would, I think, also rule out the permissibility of having regular soldiers.
Okay. So I reject the status quo. Thirdly, the most remote is an objection.
This is probably the most common objection is that private contractors possess an inappropriate motive for waging war,
namely financial gain, and therefore acts impermissibly.
Now, I think this objection is to some extent correct, although I'm not sure how weighty we should regard it.
So let me explain what I mean by that. There are three basic premises of the argument I'm going to run through reach inside.
The first is. Less controversial.
This is something that motives matter and moral judgement.
So this is based on the Kantian notion that individuals should be motivated by the right sorts of reasons for their actions to have moral worth.
Secondly, the premise is the second premise is that it's problematic individuals and predominantly motivated by financial gain.
Now this notion relies on the premise that to be moral individuals should be motivated by duty.
And duty regarding duty requires to some extent other regarding action.
So we should be motivated by concern for others rather than our own self-interest.
Now, the motive of financial gain seems to be particularly problematic because it's typically self-regarding,
not always, but typically self-regarding.
So individuals who pursue financial gain often but not always do so because they seem to want to benefit themselves.
So competence should be motivated not by financial gain, at least predominantly,
but by other regard, such as patriot, such as, for instance, patriotism.
Now, against this, Tony Lynch and A.J. Walsh in a piece in the journal Political Philosophy in 2000 replied
to such arguments by arguing that the motive of patriotism is potentially worse,
more dangerous, they argue, because, for instance,
it can lead to dehumanisation of the enemy and the lack of questioning of the war aims at the state.
No, I do not find this response persuasive. So there can be mild forms of patriotism.
But more fundamentally, the second premise isn't saying that individuals have to be motivated by patriotism,
saying they should be motivated by either a god before their family, humanity, state humanity, or even fellow soldiers or or patriotism.
Now, another response to the second premise is to say it's too demanding.
It's too demanding to ask. The individuals should not be predominantly motivated by other regarding concerns.
Now, in order to reply to this or two, clarifications is necessary to start with.
Individuals are required to be other regarding only so far as the motivation concerns their duties to others.
So it's only when they're thinking about considering issues to do with the rights and interests of others.
When their sites are home watching TV, they don't need to be other regarding.
They can. They can watch what they want. In addition, individuals are only predominantly required to be out of a garden.
They are still allowed to have some degree of self interest.
So, for instance, a regular soldier might possibly join the military in order to help defend others in his state from aggression.
But also as a secondary consideration because it's a good career option with good pay and good benefits on offer.
Okay. That's the second premise.
Third premise, private contractors are more likely to be motivated, predominantly motivated by financial gain than regular soldiers.
This is probably the most controversial part of the party's objection against this suggestion.
It's sometimes argued that regular soldiers are motivated by financial gain, such as wanting to pursue a career with generous remuneration.
On the other hand, there's claimed that some private contractors are motivated by other reasons,
so sometimes they are motivated by patriotism or sense of adventure, or even sometimes wanting to do something for people, anything.
You can conceive of that. Now I accept these points.
Individuals, individual contractors, just like regular soldiers, are, of course, likely to possess a variety of motives.
That kind of influenced the decision to become a contractor. Some will be motivated predominantly by financial gain.
Others won't be. Yeah, it still seems that we can reasonably expect that financial considerations will figure more
predominantly into decision making a PMC personnel than lots of their public counterparts.
Now it is extremely difficult to prove this is the case.
And I think to do this, you need to have a huge comparative study across the regular military campuses, private contractors,
including all the local national laws and third country nationals,
and compare similar personnel and actually try to establish what the actual motivations are.
It's going to be very difficult to do this also.
But nevertheless, I think we can still reasonably expect that this is the case without having that kind of degree of proof.
And this is for three reasons. Firstly, the sympathy seems to be a lot of anecdotal evidence that suggests that this is the case.
Secondly, it seems very odd that it would seem it would seem to be very old if this was the case,
if the high wages on offer for private contractors wasn't.
What the key motivating factor in the decision of private contractors to take on contracts?
So there's a clear justification or reason for this reasonable expectation, financial incentives.
And thirdly, in the various surveys that there have been of private contractors, financial considerations are often highlighted as influential.
So there have been some surveys, although they're income, but they're not such a bruiser.
So I think overall that this must be motives. Objection has some validity.
Yeah, it's only a presumptive objection. So it clearly doesn't apply to those contractors who don't possess mercenary motives.
In other words, like the violation of human rights objects.
And it only sets forth a restriction that contractors should meet if private contractors are motivated by predominately by the right sorts of reasons.
Then this objection won't apply. And it's conceivable that they could be motivated by the right sorts of reasons.
Remember what I said in the first part of the talk where contracts are simply need to be those who want the pieces that
don't need to have the intention or motive of being motivated by financial gain to be deemed a private contractor.
Furthermore, even if contractors don't meet this condition. This doesn't seem to be important.
Consider more generally when considering the grand scheme of war.
So I think this objection, we can presume, generally applies to private contractors.
More generally, this objection is going to be one that's going to hold against a lot of contractors.
Not all of them, but a lot of them. It's a restriction they should meet. I don't think a lot of them are going to meet it.
However, this consideration doesn't seem to be a major consideration when considering the whole grand scheme of war,
when we're thinking about things such as mass human rights violations, international stability, responding to aggression.
These much higher moral stakes when considering the case for and against, say, an all volunteer force,
seems to be much more important in determining the case rather than issues to the motivation of those actually fighting the force.
So then I've considered three objections and rejected them, at least in part.
I think there must be more motives. Objection has some validity, but it's not particularly weighty.
None. The objections establish that it's impermissible to be a private contractor.
Now in the final section of the play from the very briefly consider the restrictions that contractors should meet.
I'm not going to suggest that these are more demanding than those for regular soldiers.
I suggest the contractors should always make judgements in war.
That is as far as they can raise and studies are clearly just so clearly make all of the relevant just war theory criteria,
whereas regular soldiers are required to make contributions that that's only probably just.
Now I'm realising I'm running a little bit out of time when I practice this on my wife.
It took about 40 minutes, so I'm kind of slow and that's not so particular.
So restrictions from private contractors and what I call the deferral view soldiers are more required
to follow the assessments of the leaders of your self club of traditional just war considerations.
Avista disagree with this assessment. So this is in essence Harold's view that we looked at earlier.
Now there are sort the very sorts of considerations he might think give us reason to adopt the federal view.
So you might think that route is what better access to information about justice of laws.
There they sit on high level committees briefed by intelligence community.
So on the site for second you might think the route is a democratically elected and authorised by the people to make decisions about war rather than,
say, regular soldiers. Thirdly, you might think that the continuing function of the military.
And successful fighting of wars requires obedience rather than conscientious refusal of or objection.
A fourth thing you might think the soldiers largely agree when they join to fight the wars decided by their leaders.
Now as opposed to suggested. I don't think these objections these reasons provide.
A strong reason and in the feasible reasons to say the contracts, to say that the soldiers should always follow the dictates of the state.
They still sometimes look to their own private judgement. But that's only sometimes.
I do think that these reasons generally have some force. We should give them some way, if not somewhere else, as in the feasible way now.
By contrast, it's very clear that this deferral view doesn't apply for private contractors.
So private contractors aren't under the authority of the regular military.
They're largely phrases like the wars in which they fight because they're recruited on the basis of online databases on a single contract basis.
So they don't possess any pretence or institutional duties to obey that study or that commanding officer.
They haven't got a commanding officer before they signed up.
So consequently, contractors, I suggest, should always look to their own judgement of the acceptability of their participation in the conflict.
So they should always try and make judgements about them, about whether particular contracts it's going to meet the relevant just war considerations.
And they should always follow that judgement. So by contrast, the regular soldier lot to some extent be excused, if you like,
because of these four competing considerations for the role base duties.
Now. Final final point.
There's an interesting upshot of this argument is that it may, in fact, be preferable to be a private contractor in principle, at least.
Joining the regular military always poses the risk that one could be asked to make an unjust contribution in the war conflict, unjust wars.
It may also be that disobeying orders will have detrimental effects on the military
more generally and undermine the military's likelihood of fighting effective wars,
which may turn out to be just overall. So given the potential harmful effects of conscientious refusal and the risk of fighting unjust wars,
it may be better to choose to become a private contractor.
If an individual you can choose and contracts when you're supremely confident that you're only going to be fighting unjust wars.
In addition, you might know that it'll be hard for you to conscientious refuse if you join the military, regular military,
because, for instance, the costs of doing so, say imprisonment or being ostracised and potentially respect for authority figures.
So if you're a bit you hold in very high regard.
By contrast, you might think that it makes it very much easier for you to do the right thing if you're a private contractor.
So if you were really moral person,
you might think the best thing to do is to go off and actually be a private contractor rather than to join the regular military.
That's in principle.
Of course, as a practical matter, it's it's a further question whether contractors take on the options to pursue to fight only unjust wars.
Given the financial considerations I've already alluded to and other considerations that kind of
influence their decisions to take on board and indeed I'm going to finish on a more sceptical note.
So although it might in principle be permissible to be a private contractor
and even in principle be preferable to be a private contractor in practice,
it's likely that many private contractors act impermissibly.
First, as I've already suggested, many may lack the right motive for participation in war.
Second, most, I think,
will not take advantage of that free choice and will participate instead in wars that are unjust according to just war theory conditions.
This is because, although I'm not going to argue the point here, most wars are, I think, unjust.
If this is correct, then it seems to follow that most of those who participate in unjust wars will also act impermissibly.
So fine. The point then is that although I think that it can in principally the.
Permissible to be a private contractor, given that most wars are unlikely to be just given them financial motives.
Presumably a private contractors. I think in practice this is unlikely, I think.