'Pentagon's New Map' Author Welcomes Global Stability Industry

Thomas P. M. Barnett, author of The Pentagon's New Map and other future-oriented books, says the "global stability industry" is a new and positive phenomenon resulting from globalization.

Mentioning Blackwater in a syndicated column for the Scripps Howard news service, Barnett cites what he considers two bright spots: the launch of a new global stability magazine called Serviam, and the new US Army field manual on stability operations.

"Globalization sweeps this planet with a speed that stuns its most advanced member states and swamps its weakest. As these penetrating networks reformat traditional societies, a certain amount of social instability inevitably ensues among the least resilient. That's inherent to any frontier-integrating age, and we're experiencing one on an unprecedented global scale right now," Barnett writes.

"America is hardly in charge of this process, as most of globalization is now fueled by rising Asia. But as the world's sole military superpower, we naturally feel responsibility even when we're strategically tied-down elsewhere - e.g., Iraq and Afghanistan. Where gaps in coverage inevitably emerge, look for the global stability industry to step in. The cynical option is to 'let 'em burn.'" But an optimist, he argues, would look toward private providers of "sovereignty services" to those troubled lands.

"It definitely beats the alternative, on display right now in starving Haiti, where relief food supplies from the international community often sit on harbor docks - undistributed - while poor locals survive by eating cakes of mud," he says.

Hence the need for a magazine like Serviam: "Those industry non-stories must be told as well."

The second positive example Barnett encountered was at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where he received a briefing on "a new Army field manual on stability operations. Why this matters: Army field manuals are the authoritative how-to guides for future operations. The newest versions clearly reflect the build-up of operational experience in this long war against radical extremism.
When the Army's capstone field manual was revised earlier this year, it declared that stability operations should now be given the same priority as the kinetics - conventional combat operations. That was an unprecedented shift in response to the failures we experienced in Iraq and Afghanistan. . . .

"What the new field manual on stability ops does . . . is pick up that operational thread at the end of conflict and extend it through a long-term, stable peace. In short, it's what comes next.
America's defense community continues to adapt itself in this long war, with all roads leading to a far more developed capacity to conduct stability operations. As we proceed down this pathway, America can use all the bright minds and intelligent voices - both inside and outside of government - which it can muster.

New Video Shows How Blackwater Supports the Troops

A new video on YouTube shows one of the ways Blackwater Worldwide supports the troops.

No, it's not about putting little yellow ribbon magnets on the back of your cars, or grandstanding in front of television cameras. It's the real thing - parachuting ammunition to the US Army Special Forces to resupply our warfighters in hot combat areas. It's really helping the troops fight terrorists.

The remarkable video was just posted. It shows two Blackwater C-212 planes on resupply missions to Army forward operating bases in Afghanistan. The video does not give locations.

One of the neat things about this video is that, unlike other videos of Blackwater on the Internet, this one is annotated so that the viewer knows what's going on and in what context.

Credits at the end of the video say it was shot by Dr. Michael Waller of the Institute of World Politics. A check of the IWP website shows that Waller is also editor of Serviam, a magazine about the global stability industry. (For a higher resolution of the video, go to this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQyl_WnaJ1I and click the "Watch In High Quality" icon just below the right lower corner of the image box.) When visiting YouTube, be sure to give the video a great rating!

Government Guards Cost 250% More than Blackwater Guards in Iraq

Here are some surprising figures: A State Department Diplomatic Security agent costs the taxpayer 250 percent more to be stationed in Iraq than does a private security contractor like Blackwater for the same job.

This, despite reports that the private contractors are paid more per day than the government agents.

State Department testimony before Congress shows that each Diplomatic Security agent based in Iraq cost the taxpayer about $1,000,000 a year, when accounting for salary, benefits, support gear, and support personnel. Blackwater CEO Erik Prince told the same congressional panel that his company charges the government $400,000 a year per person to do the exact same job. Built into that per-person cost is the contractor's wage (billed daily and only for days worked), training, gear, administrative support, vehicles, and helicopter and airplane support.

The figures are rendered on the above chart.

What accounts for this huge savings? Click here for the full story in Serviam, the magazine of the global stability industry.

Analyst: 'Private Contractors are as American as Apple Pie'

"While many commentators acknowledge that private military and security contractors are not mercenaries, some of them still contend that their use, both qualitatively and quantitatively, is a new phenomenon, something that emerged full blown from free market apostles like Ronald Reagan, George Bush (senior and junior) and Bill Clinton," military analyst David Isenberg writes in his "Dogs of War" column for UPI.

"But any fair-minded reading of history should quickly expose such a view for what it is: namely nonsense.

"Private contractors are as American as apple pie. In fact, without private contractors there would not have been an America. Or, to paraphrase Genesis: In the beginning, God created private contractors.

"Private contractors helped set the stage for what would become America. Consider that Capt. John Smith was hired by the Virginia Co. to provide security and conduct military operations for the English settlers at Jamestown. He led the 1606 [sic] expedition to Virginia and was elected head of Jamestown colony."

And so on. Isenberg goes on to quote generously from a history of the 400-year tradition of private military contractors that appeared last year in Serviam, the magazine of the private contractor industry. A good reminder to those who think that the Blackwater phenomenon is something new.

(Pictured: Captain John Smith, the first PMC in America, is honored on a 1907 US postage stamp.)