Response to "Corporate Warriors"

Because I am very unfamiliar with the army and military policies, I did not really know how to react to this article. I can't decide whether outsourcing or privatizing the military is a good thing or a bad thing or neither. The only issue I have with privatizing the military relates back to our discussion of military service linked with citizenship. If people feel that they are best able to display their citizenship and country pride by joining the military, how do these outsourced companies fit in? If the military becomes just like any other commodity, with division of labor, outsourcing, and privatization, does this somehow cheapen the work and sense of citizenship of those who join the military? At the end of "Corporate Warriors", Singer discusses how the trend of privatizing the military will lessen the state's hold over the military as it becomes part of the private sector: "By removing absolute control from government, however and privatizing it to the market, the state's hold over violence is broken. With the growth of the global military services industry, just as it has been in other international areas such as trade and finance, the state's role in the security sphere has now become deprivileged" (18). It seems that if the state is not involved in its security and military affairs, it defeats the purpose of having a military defending the state. If the military is sponsored and funded by private firms and not the state itself, how can they accurately represent and fight for the state? It seems very strange to outsource something like the military, because the military is created specifically to defend and represent the state, so privatizing it seems like it defeats the purpose and contradicts the point of military defense. As Singer claims bluntly, "It is outsourcing and privatization of a twenty-first-century variety, and it changes many of the old rules of international politics and warfare" (9).