Ethics of Blackwater

Michael Walzer postulates in The New Republic that private armies — such as Blackwater — are a liability, not only for the USA, but for the nation-state system.

If we want to maintain accountability in war, then, we had best take a statist view of military activity. I don’t want to argue that private armies run by commercial companies, political parties, religious organizations, or governmentson-the-sly are everywhere and always a bad idea; but they are mostly a bad idea. The state is the only reliable agent of public responsibility that we have. Of course, it often isn’t reliable, and it often doesn’t represent a democratic public. One might plausibly argue that the army of a tyrannical state is a private army. Still, there isn’t any agency other than the state in the contemporary world that can authorize and then control the use of force — and whose officials are (sometimes) accountable to the rest of us.

[Max] Weber’s definition suggests that the state is constituted by its monopoly on the use of force. It is also, and perhaps more importantly, justified by its monopoly. This is what states are for; this is what they have to do before they do anything else–shut down the private wars, disarm the private armies, lock up the warlords. It is a very dangerous business to loosen the state’s grip on the use of violence, to allow war to become anything other than a public responsibility.

Walzer’s point is well taken, but it is a little dramatic. I suspect he forgets that private armies and mercenaries have been around for as long as the nation-state. For example, the Hessians were employed by the British crown in the American Revolution. Thus, firms like Blackwater have historical precedent and so far the nation-state has survived.

Moreover, Blackwater hasn’t yet undertaken a private war, nor are they legally allowed to by US federal law. Blackwater CEO Eric Prince is on record saying that he sees humanitarian crises such as Darfur and Rwanda as a possible future market for the company. If the past is any judge, I don’t know who would pay for that service since the US and UN have largely ignored those crises anyways. Even if the US or UN did pay, one could argue that the war would still be the government’s responsibility considering they are paying for it.

But that’s an argument for later. Today Blackwater provides a protective service in war, not war itself. Exaggeration shouldn’t hype up their capabilities, but it shouldn’t hide their potential either.

Private, mercenary armies never work over a period of a century or so at best.
In fact, most every government that has relied on mercenaries falls because of them. Your citing of Hessians during British colonialism’s prime identifies a highly unreliable (despite well-trained) military force. Italy’s reliance on mercenaries for most of the pre-modern era often caused internal conflict.
But what concerns me is that a private martial organization is too reminiscent of Hitler’s brownshirts.

You’re assuming we rely on Blackwater though, and we do not, at least not yet.