Regulation and Deployment of Private Security Forces in Critical Zones

 A Market-Based Solution with Democratic Safeguards for Conflict Resolution

Private Security Forces in Critical Zones

By Antonio Fernando Pinheiro Pedro

"Titles or credentials do not define the proper asset for operating in critical zones. It is virtually impossible to train courage, integrity, common sense, motivation, and energy. Professionalism is character and determination."

1. Introduction

The use of outsourced professional military and paramilitary forces in crisis contexts has long been a practical alternative for governments and empires in conflict.

After centuries of evolution in state relations and human conflict involving mercenaries, condottieri, assassins, shinobi, and other factions, the deployment of self-organized professional groups for force missions and specialized operations has come to be perceived by the modern state as a necessary “vaccine” — applicable in conventional warfare, counterterrorism, criminal organization suppression, guerrilla warfare, and, exceptionally, in interventions and the maintenance of order amid institutional instability and territorial breakdown.

The advantage of using self-organized forces lies in reducing operational risks and collateral damage, supplying specialized human resources in the face of personnel shortages, and optimizing results — especially when the client lacks the necessary operational capacity.

Unlike the Roman auxiliary legion system, self-organized professional forces operate with autonomy and delegated authority. That is, the contracted scheme aligns with the mission without losing its identity and, even when vested with authority and command by the contracting state, maintains a jurisdictional or concession-based relationship — governed by the terms of the contract.

Thus, while functional in fourth-generation, hybrid, and asymmetric conflicts, this outsourcing of force must be strictly regulated to prevent degeneration into primitive mercenarism or authoritarian repression.

This article seeks to understand the current strategic context of military operations in armed conflicts and the role of security forces in territorial control and the maintenance of order, personal safety, and property within Rule of Law regimes.

The goal is to analyze a potential regulatory framework that allows the use of private forces as a controlled market solution — without compromising sovereignty or fundamental rights.

2. Historical Overview: From Antiquity to the Bush Era

Antiquity 

Empires like Persia and Carthage extensively used mercenaries. However, they suffered from fragmented loyalties, a phenomenon that contributed to their downfall. The lack of cohesion during critical moments led to military fragility and collapse.

Persia’s tragic experience under Darius III illustrates the dangers of outsourcing force without strategic control. Similarly, the disintegration of Roman legions due to mass admission of barbarian auxiliaries from the 2nd century AD exposed the risks of inserting “mercenary” profiles into regular army ranks — with disastrous results.

The issue gained serious attention after the Peace of Westphalia, whose treaties established the system of sovereign states and regulated the use of national armed forces (following thirty years of war involving varied, including irregular, forces in Europe).

Cold War 

After two world wars, the world split into two ideologically defined blocs, initiating the Cold War — cold between the two poles (USA and USSR), hot in peripheral proxy conflicts, often involving mercenary forces as geopolitical tools, especially in Africa and Latin America.

Examples include Angola, Congo, Sierra Leone, Cuba, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Bolivia — all theaters of conflict with extensive use of irregular professional elements.

Putin Era 

Following the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall, conflicts became regionally concentrated, largely due to the collapse of Soviet influence. Intervention operations in regional conflicts began to require veterans of special forces to supplement diminished regular forces.

In Russia, Boris Yeltsin saw the need to regroup former veterans into contracted special forces to secure strategic Russian interests in rebellious territories like Chechnya.

In the 21st century, under Putin, the Wagner Group operated for the Kremlin in Syria, Ukraine, and Central Africa, serving as an incubator for the Afrika Corps. These self-organized professional groups contracted by Russia are linked via the GRU — the Kremlin’s intelligence service.

George W. Bush and the Regional Security Doctrine 

In the United States, demand arose from the War on Terror launched by President George W. Bush after the 9/11 attacks. Bush shifted Clinton’s 1997 environmental security doctrine to implement a Regional Security Doctrine.

Faced with the stress caused by intensive use of regular troops and the National Guard in maintaining conflicts in Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia, the U.S. government began engaging with private military companies (PMCs) — such as Blackwater (now Academi), composed of special forces veterans and foreign operatives with extensive combat experience, granted special authority to operate in war zones.

This practice became institutionalized in the U.S., enhancing specialized operations but also sparking debates on accountability and sovereignty.

Specialized companies emerged during the Cold War (1960s–70s) as components of proxy warfare, many based in the Netherlands or South Africa, staffed by veterans of WWII, Korea, and Vietnam. Later, amid guerrilla and terrorist movements in the Middle East and Latin America, they gained reinforcement from both blocs and benefited from the downsizing of regular forces after the Berlin Wall’s fall.

However, as private militias, they are often confused with informal actions that blur the lines between private security, paramilitarism, and organized crime.

3. Present Day: Paramilitarism, Militias, and Gray Zones

The growing asymmetry of modern conflicts, with the advent of hybrid warfare, imposes multiple challenges on strategists, under intense media scrutiny and transinstitutional pressures that distort the boundaries of armed conflict.

For this reason, PMCs and similar entities like the Wagner Group no longer operate solely as private combat forces but as components of a broader geopolitical ecosystem encompassing diffuse, environmental, and commercial interests.

Internal public security today — amid the internationalization of organized crime and the rise of narco-terrorist and disguised authoritarian regimes — demands robust intelligence activity from both Western and Eastern powers to ensure integrity in global trade and finance.

In this context, the use of professional organizations for specific extraterritorial purposes finds fertile ground.

Corruption, careerism, ideological capture, incompetence, and lack of leadership often drive governments to outsource critical operations and intelligence tasks to professionals.

Latin America exemplifies this insecurity. In Brazil, informal militias blur the boundaries between security, paramilitarism, and organized crime, while criminal factions cause mass migrations, abandonment of entire cities, and occupation of urban communities — with evident complicity and support from public agents embedded in oversight institutions.

Brazil’s situation is so compromised that Law 12.720/12, intended to organize repression of factions, deliberately failed to precisely define the criminal phenomenon, opening space for malicious and dangerous manipulations.

Lost amid arrogance, ignorance, ideological capture, and corruption, Brazil’s legal-bureaucratic establishment cannot operate a legal framework or human resources capable of repressing corruption, crime, and narco-terrorism.

Following Brazil’s chaos, Ecuador offers an example of uncontrolled outsourcing. Ecuador has over 125,000 private security agents — double the number of public police. Private companies operate in strategic areas such as ports, borders, industries, and vulnerable communities. Private security grew alongside dollarization and state weakening, creating fertile ground for organized crime.

In these countries, drug trafficking infiltrates public and private security institutions, and protection access is unequal: companies and elites can afford private security, while communities remain unprotected and exposed to criminality.

In Ecuador and El Salvador — where violence suppression has been more successful — the state response was militarized repression, with emergency decrees and authorization for the Armed Forces to act directly against criminal factions.

Venezuela — whose regime seems to be the model pursued by Brazil’s current government — is on the brink of international intervention due to territorial chaos, with the state itself integrated into the criminological phenomenon threatening U.S. and continental security.

In this context, the term “sovereignty” sounds pathetic when uttered by figures notoriously opposed to any interest resembling human dignity...

4. Technological Shock and State Obsolescence

Hybrid conflicts combine conventional warfare, cyberwarfare, disinformation, counterintelligence, judicialization, internationalization, and paramilitary actions.

On the battlefield, technology — especially AI, big data, and device integration — along with informational warfare and deep-state manipulation, have become strategic destabilization vectors.

The state apparatus, structured around codified legal assumptions and hegemonic bureaucracies, cannot keep pace with innovation. This may be the advantage of the U.S. constitutional system, centered on checks and balances guided by popular sovereignty, free from intermediaries and interpreters who “tutor” it — capable of equipping the government with critical instruments when needed.

Even monolithic dictatorships struggle to keep up with fourth-generation conflict innovations, facing vulnerabilities in cyber defense, intelligence, and rapid response.

China may be an exception, with its Parliament and single party functioning as a massive cartelized holding, evolving through meritocracy and a population focused on “prosperity” — unleashing large-scale energy for technological competitiveness.

Thus, even the outsourcing of external conflict operations is part of an emerging global solution — contracting specialized services with flexibility and constant technological updates to support the state in real time.

5. Challenges in Preparing Regular Forces for Fourth-Generation Warfare (4GW)

4GW breaks with the classical strategic logic of “mass and maneuver.” The focus is on asymmetric capabilities for deterrence, disruption, and annihilation by highly specialized units capable of operating with functional and precise technology in natural or urban environments. This precision also extends to groups operating in digital domains and through psychological means.

The conflict in Ukraine exemplifies this transition: the use of drones against tank columns, air bases, infantry units, and urban targets disrupted traditional defenses. Electronic warfare, supported by artificial intelligence and autonomous outsourced forces, rebalanced power in specific areas and redefined the battlefield.

In Gaza and southern Lebanon, the story is similar. The impressive technological capacity of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), combined with advanced intelligence, virtually decimated the leadership of Hamas and Hezbollah — whose hybrid warfare capabilities were once formidable. The remnants of these forces now rely on support from antisemitic militants embedded in the deep state of Western countries.

The conflict in the Strait of Hormuz — involving the U.S., Israel, the Houthis, and Iran — also demonstrated that brute naval force or seemingly well-structured ground forces like Iran’s Artesh and the IRGC are insufficient against the persistent and invasive asymmetric strategies of the Houthis. Their use of drones and missiles in open seas against traditional combat units, and the inefficacy of these same weapons against high-tech defense systems like Israel’s Iron Dome, highlight the limitations of conventional defenses.

Ultimately, this entire scenario demands doctrinal reconfiguration, emphasizing agility, interoperability, and multidimensional integration (land, air, sea, cyberspace).

It also requires a clear understanding of the role of self-organized professional forces in asymmetric conflict theaters — especially when the technological and operational lag of traditional forces necessitates supplementation.

6. Training and Modernization Through Service Contracts

Preparing personnel for these asymmetric times requires strategic reeducation focused on irregular warfare, cybersecurity, psychological operations, and tactical intelligence.

Contracting specialized training services allows for flexibility, access to cutting-edge knowledge, and continuous adaptation of regular forces to emerging threats. This includes partnerships with centers of excellence, think tanks, defense companies, consultancies, and academies (not the ideological madrassa-like institutions found in Brazil, but the few remaining private centers of excellence).

The new defense and security strategy must focus on adaptive doctrines and realistic simulations.

In this context, the supplemental use of well-trained teams for specific missions should not be dismissed. And there must be a clear legal understanding of this practice.

It is possible to establish clear and transparent legal parameters, with public contracts subject to legislative oversight.

The exceptional use of private forces in internal conflicts must be tied to the nature of the aggression. Political repression or persecution must not be part of the equation.

Operational criteria — such as an international registry, a global database with performance history, compliance records, and certifications — should be mandatory.

Training and conduct protocols must follow internationally recognized standards.

In international law, this phenomenon deserves a new Westphalian agreement regulating the use of PMCs, with explicit prohibition against hiring military companies by authoritarian regimes — under penalty of committing mercenarism, as defined by the UN’s International Convention Against the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries.

In this regard, PMCs should not operate in countries that fail to guarantee minimum civil liberties to their citizens.

Furthermore, clauses of criminal responsibility should ensure that private agents operating in critical zones are held accountable for crimes before international jurisdictions, while national courts handle common offenses.

It is important to specify the various roles of specialized forces provided by private companies, ranging from security to logistics, intelligence, and technical support in high-risk areas.

These services may include intervention in armed conflict zones, regions with institutional collapse, environmental disaster areas, or locations with high criminal activity. They frequently involve securing strategic installations (such as pipelines, mines, embassies, and transportation of strategic equipment), protecting humanitarian teams or journalists in conflict zones, supporting local governments, engineering firms, and health services in stabilization or infrastructure reconstruction missions.

Environmental monitoring in areas of deforestation or illegal mining often requires supplemental action.

Therefore, there must be a clear distinction between private security and militias to prevent formally contracted forces from being confused with informal or criminal armed groups — especially in hybrid conflict scenarios, where compromised media and ideologically driven justice agents use deterrent instruments to obstruct law-and-order missions.

7. Conceptual Reference

In the article “Asymmetric Conflicts, Paramilitarism, Diffuse Interests, and Fourth-Generation Hybrid Warfare” — which I recommend reading — I analyzed the risk factors for sovereignty and the Rule of Law from a criminological perspective, highlighting the difference between criminal and mercenary factions and legally admitted organizations.

Indeed, there are controversies and challenges regarding the legality and regulation of the authority granted to self-organized professional forces, especially concerning the accountability of the contracting state or the hired company.

The issue of national sovereignty, in light of the consented presence of private forces, will always be viewed by critics as external interference — and this becomes more complex in asymmetric conflicts, where operations are often classified.

However, the growing demand for companies with expertise in geopolitical and environmental intelligence is undeniable. And there is a significant gap in bureaucratic frameworks regarding the ability to provide and execute hybrid services involving security, risk analysis, corporate diplomacy, mission commitment, operational innovation, differentiated accountability, experience, and international certifications.

It is therefore essential to retain the definition of Private Military Companies (PMCs) as commercial organizations offering specialized military or security services in unstable contexts.

These operations are conducted under contract with states, international organizations, corporations, or private actors — and stem from operational deficiencies or political constraints affecting regular forces.

Key elements of this definition include:

• Transfer of military or security functions to the private sector (logistics, training, asset protection, intelligence, territorial control, and direct combat);

• Deployment in critical conflict zones (geopolitical spaces marked by absent or fragile state authority and elevated risks to human and institutional security);

• Legal ambiguity stemming from the gray area in International Humanitarian Law in which PMCs operate;

• Fragmentation of sovereignty in affected states — even when they are the clients — as privatization reconfigures the concept of the “state monopoly on violence,” amid asymmetry, flexible governance, and legitimacy challenges in hybrid conflicts.

Thus, the use of professional private forces is both a cause and a consequence of the so-called “new wars,” where conflict is decentralized, transnational, and driven by diffuse interests.

8. Conclusion

The rise of private military companies in critical conflict zones is not merely an operational shift in warfare — it signals a profound transformation in the architecture of contemporary sovereignty.

By outsourcing traditionally state-held functions, governments not only delegate firepower but also fragment the foundations of legitimate authority. In this scenario, regular paramilitarism and private security cease to be opposing poles and instead form a hybrid spectrum of armed governance within the Regulatory State — shaped by diffuse demands and interests, where the monopoly on violence dissolves into contracts, corporate interests, and the gray zones of international law.

Ultimately, more than a regulatory issue, the subject analyzed here is a symbolic dispute: who defines security, who wields power, and who bears responsibility for its consequences?

The privatization of war is not merely a technical phenomenon — it is a symptom of a world in which the state is no longer the sole protagonist of order. And perhaps, in this new theater, the true battlefield is legitimacy.

 

References: 

 

PEDRO, Antonio Fernando Pinheiro - CONFLITOS ASSIMÉTRICOS, PARAMILITARISMO, INTERESSES DIFUSOS E GUERRA HÍBRIDA DE 4ª GERAÇÃO - in Blog The Eagle View, in https://www.theeagleview.com.br/2015/09/paramilitarismo-direito-e-conflitos-de.html

 

PEDRO, Antonio Fernando Pinheiro - ISONOMIA DA JURISDIÇÃO MILITAR NO EXERCÍCIO DA GARANTIA DA LEI E DA ORDEM - in Blog The Eagle View, in https://www.theeagleview.com.br/2018/02/isonomia-da-jurisdicao-militar-no.html

 

Comitê Internacional da Cruz Vermelha (CICV) – EMPRESAS MILITARES DE SEGURANÇA PRIVADAS - desafios contemporâneos do Direito Internacional Humanitário frente à SUA  atuação, in https://www.icrc.org/pt/direito-e-politicas/empresas-militares-e-de-seguranca-privadas

 

Ministério da Defesa - Brasil - A PRIVATIZAÇÃO DA GUERRA? -  A participação das empresas militares privadas em conflitos  armados e o papel do Estado enquanto ator internacional, in https://www.gov.br/defesa/pt-br/arquivos/ajuste-01/ensino_e_pesquisa/defesa_academia/cmdn/cmdn_2015/aa_privatizacaoa_daa_guerraa_aa_participacaoa_dasa_empresasa_militaresa_privadasa_ema_conflitosa_armadosa_ea_oa_papela_doa_estadoa_enquantoa_atora_internacional.pdf

 

SINGER, Peter W.  – CORPORATE WARRIORS: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry,  Editora Cornell University Press, 2007.

 

KALDOR, Mary – NEW AND OLD WARS: Organized Violence in a Global Era - Editora Polity Press, 1999

 

 

 

 

Antonio Fernando Pinheiro Pedro is a lawyer (University of São Paulo), journalist, and institutional and environmental consultant. He is the founding partner of Pinheiro Pedro Advogados law firm and director of AICA – Corporate and Environmental Intelligence Agency . He served on the Green Economy Task Force of the International Chamber of Commerce, was a professor at the Barro Branco Military Police Academy, and a lecturer at NISAM — the Information and Environmental Health Center at the University of São Paulo. He has worked as a consultant for UNICRI — the United Nations Interregional Crime Research Institute, as well as for UNDP, the World Bank, and the IFC. He is a member of the Brazilian Institute of Lawyers (IAB), the Superior Council for National Studies and Policy at FIESP — the Federation of Industries of the State of São Paulo, and Vice President of the São Paulo Press Association. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Ambiente Legal portal and curator of the blog The Eagle View.