The Swedish model of the Privatization of War

Broadly speaking, the Privatization of War appears to be quite new notion in the theory of international relations even today, when such things as 'hybrid war', 'private military industry' and 'modern warfare' are widely known all around the world both in theory and practice. That would be the reason why my first and foremost important task would be to shed light on the basics of the concept in order to explore different realms of the privatized military sphere. Moving forward, it seems to be absolutely necessary to give definitions to those fundamental notions that created the need for the whole concept of the Privatization of War in the first place. It appears to be highly logical to start from the basic term of the private military and security companies (a.k.a. PMSCs) that is usually used to describe those private commercial firms that conduct the whole variety of different security and military-oriented services all over the world. Without these private profit organizations the second most important thing would be almost certainly impossible, and here we speak about 'Desovereignization' as the world-wide process of states losing their traditional domain over some spheres, including, most importantly, military and security realms. As it goes, Desovereignization supported by growing both in quality and quantity private military industry leads directly to the central point of the overall tendency - to the existence of the Privatization of War. The very term is generally referred to the global process of outsourcing those traditionally state-controlled spheres such as, for example, military and security sphere, to private actors. In other words, the term describes the increasing trend towards commercializing no more, no less than the warfare of the nation states.

The interesting thing here is that usually researchers conducting their study turn to the USA and their 'original' model of the Privatization of War. Well, unsurprisingly, because the very concept was generated by the American researchers (Peter W. Singer and Deborah Avant) and based upon the American PMSCs case. Although the whole deal seems to go on the same wheels all over the world with no regard to the actual context for every particular case, the present work focuses on the possibility of existence of the unique Swedish model of the Privatization of War. The thing is that all the distinguishing features of the Swedish socio-political system can possibly affect the private military sphere so immensely that it would give us legitimate right to conclude that there is, in fact, unique model of the Privatization of War in Sweden.

As it turned out, Sweden has some very important characteristics that more or less directly support the idea of a truly existing contrast between the 'traditional' American private military industry and the Swedish one, especially when it comes to the prime purposes of the local PMSC as well as to their discourse and general principles. Three major tendencies were highlighted during my research: firstly, the administrative structure of Sweden is organized in such way that all the municipalities have rather large scale of independence in their everyday policies and, surprisingly, even military and security spheres sometimes may get along with this general system. Despite the fact that defense still stays under direct control of the central government, the overall Swedish decentralization gives enough place for maneuver to the PMSCs. Especially important this feature of the Swedish private military industry becomes when it comes to overcoming existing threats inside rather closed municipal communities. Even though the governmental intelligence and law enforcement agencies usually play the role of the regulator of security-related activities, it doesn't work effectively in Sweden, due to the lack of personnel and, in general, other internal policy priorities.

External, so-called global terrorist threat until quite recently has never been an issue for a welfare states, while the hidden in the shadows 'lone-wolf threat occupied pretty large place in the internal list of security threats. Moreover, sometimes police as well as the state intelligence agencies appear to be incapable of preventing and sorting out this kind of 'grassroots' problems, and this is when the PMSC made their entrance proposing their wide range of highly professional and technically advanced services. So, in other words, the Swedish PMSC can be characterized as more, so to say, 'home-caring' entities than the American ones, as they usually perform all sorts of security-related services at home, on the micro-level, rather than fighting on the actual foreign battlefields, on the macro-level, respectively.

Secondly, it is important to point out that the Swedish PMSCs operate in a strict accordance with the famous Scandinavian socio-democratic values, such as social welfare, emancipation, sustainable development and equality. And, surprisingly, program documents of the PMSCs, for example, Scandinavian Risk Solutions usually consist of rather peaceful, protective and socio¬oriented passages, in comparison to the American companies that usually tend to use far more masculine,aggressive expressions to describe themselves. This difference can be seen as insufficient at first, but further analysis shows that language reflects the reality better than any figures could; the basic welfare-state values shaped the private military industry in such a peculiar way that today we can see that they tend to concentrate on the micro-level activities, offering their private protective intelligence services to private households, domestic-abuse victim's shelters, schools and even private individuals and their digital devices.

Finally, we can turn towards the preliminary results of my research. It appears to be clear, at the moment, that the Swedish PMSC do indeed exist in a different reality than the American ones. Formally speaking, they generally can be described in terms of welfare-state values, being objectively very eco-friendly, technically advanced and socio-oriented. They tend to perform all sorts of security services on the grassroots level, which is extremely important distinguishing feature, and, finally, they are far more interested in performing security services than military in contrast to the infamous American PMSCs.

Список литературы
1. Avant, D. The Market for Force: The Consequences of Privatizing Security / D. Avant. - New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. - 328 р.
2. Boyce, J. Surrendering Sovereignty. The Private Military Industry, the State, and the Ideology of Outsourcing [Электронный ресурс] / J. Boyce. - Электрон. ст. - 2013. - URL: http://iissonline.net/surrendering-sovereigntv-the-private-military-industrv-the-state-and-the-ideologv-of- outsourcing, свободный. - (04.04.2015).
3. Higate, P. The private militarised and security contractor as geocorporeal actor [Электронныйресурс] / P. Higate. - Электрон. ст. - 2012. - URL: http://www.bris.ac.uk/spais/research/workingpapers/wpspaisfiles/higate-09-12.pdf, свободный. - (25.12.2014).
4. Singer, P. W. Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry and Its Ramifications for International Security / P. W. Singer. - Ithaca and London : Cornell University Press, 2007. - 360 p.
5. Stewart S. Fighting Grassroots Terrorism: How Local Vigilance Can Help. Available at: lUtps:/Av\v\v.stratror.com/\veeklY/20110803-rightirm-grassroots-terrorism-local-vigilance-help. - (14.04.2016).

Аннотация. В статье анализируется феномен «приватизации войны» на примере особенностей развития частной военной индустрии в Швеции. Исследование строится на основе сравнительного анализа «традиционной» модели американского частного военного бизнеса и шведского, выявляются важные концептуальные и практические отличия.
Ключевые слова: частные военные и охранные компании (PrivateMilitaryandSecurityCompanies), десуверенизация (Desovereignization), Шведская административная модель, «приватизация» войны (PrivatizationofWar).

В. А. Маркова