ABSTRACT
Post-Cold War battlefields have become filled with individuals who are not in uniform. Particularly in conflicts involving the US and its NATO allies, combat forces now share their once-isolated battlefields with a growing number of civilian agencies and individuals, whose priorities and procedures often differ dramatically from those of military commanders. These civilians fall into at least three discrete categories: contractors, federal employees, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), each of which carries its own challenges. Contractors now provide an ever-increasing array of services and support to military forces, but their priorities focus on profit motives rather than on support of military objectives, and these individuals may choose to abandon the mission if the level of risk becomes intolerable. Some theorists, including Phil Williams, have described the conflicts of the twenty-
first century as continuing to be a “growing number of increasingly disorderly spaces” (Williams 2006). These conflicts will be defined by some “concrete factor such as ethnicity, religion, or language or increasingly by self-defined and self-selected criteria” (Moodie 2009: 20). These future conflicts will be less politically motivated by ideology, as most were in the twentieth century. The next series of conflicts in the world will instead center on territory, resources, and social power. Based on this emerging nature of conflict, they will be inherently difficult to counter with only military forces. The modern battlefield has become exponentially more complex, as soldiers compete
with a growing number of civilian individuals and agencies for information and influence. Contractors, government agencies, and NGOs now clutter and complicate modern military operations, and the trend will probably continue. US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has repeatedly called for more civilians, ranging from agronomists to economists, to support America’s ongoing counterinsurgency in Afghanistan (Maurer 2009). He asked for those who “might serve as a bridge” (Maurer 2009: 1). This chapter examines the role of non-military agents on the battlefields of Iraq and
Afghanistan, and addresses several trends that will characterize future conflicts. Although these trends are of particular concern for the democracies of the West, we recognize that
many non-Western military organizations face similar challenges and opportunities. Companies from the People’s Republic of China, for example, currently employ several thousand civilian engineers, technicians, and private security personnel on construction, mining, and drilling projects throughout Africa, with the majority of projects in oilexporting nations (Levitt 2006). The Chinese presence boosts local economies, but critics view these projects as a foot in the door for Chinese paramilitary intervention (Hammes 2007). Likewise, the benefits and challenges of other non-military agents on the battlefield are
becoming a global phenomenon, as various government and humanitarian agencies respond to the natural and man-made crises of the post-Cold War era. This chapter focuses on the relationships between these agencies and the American military, whose annual expenditures and strategic commitments dwarf those of its allies and rivals (Shah 2009).
