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What
is a Private Military Company (contractor, firm) or PMC? |
| What are Private Military Companies (contractors, firms) or PMCs? |
| What is a Private Security Company (contractor, firm) or PSC? |
| What are Private Security Companies (contractors, firms) or PSCs? |
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Private Military Companies can be defined as
legally established multinational commercial enterprises offering services that involve the potential to exercise force in a systematic way and by military means and/or the transfer or enhancement of that potential to clients. The potential to exercise force can materialize when rendering, for example, a vast array of protective services in climates of instability (on land and sea). Transfer or enhancement, on the other hand, occurs when delivering expert military training and other services such as logistics support, risk assessment, and intelligence gathering. It is a ‘potential’ to exercise force because the presence of a PMC can deter aggressors from considering the use of force as a viable course of action. (*)
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Taken from: Ortiz, Carlos. 'The Private Military Company: An Entity at the Center of Overlapping Spheres of Commercial Activity and Responsibility' (PDF), in Jäger, Thomas and Kümmel, Gerhard (eds). Private Military and Security Companies. Chances, Problems, Pitfalls and Prospects, Vs Verlag, 2007, pp. 60-1. > PDFs: page 60, page 61. |
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Other terms used to refer to Private Military Companies (PMCs) are Private Security Companies or Contractors (PSCs) and
Privatized Military Firms (PMFs). Therefore, in spite of inevitable conceptual ambiguities
this definition also answers the questions
What Private Security Companies or What
Privatized Military firms are. Use the menu
on the left to explore the variable articulation of these peculiar private military and/or private security service providers, whether labeled PMCs, PMFs, or PSCs. However, please note that the PSC label is increasingly and erroneously used in the popular press to refer to traditional security firms, which chiefly profit from the offering of passive security services that have nothing to do with the military.
(*) An earlier version of this definition is found in Ortiz, Carlos. 'Regulating Private Military Companies: States and the Expanding Business of Commercial Security Provision', in L. Assassi, D. Wigan and K. van der Pijl (eds). Global Regulation. Managing Crises After the Imperial Turn. Houndmills / New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2004, p. 206.
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