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BUSINESS AND SECURITY

Explore the complex relationship between business and security, including the rise of Chinese multinational corporations, the role of private military companies, and the privatization of security-related functions. Discover the potential for business to contribute to good peacetime security and crisis handling. Examine case studies and discuss various solutions, including prohibition, regulation, contract control, and self-regulation.

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BUSINESS AND SECURITY

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  1. BUSINESS AND SECURITY What does that make you think of?

  2. OVERMIGHTY WESTERN MULTINATIONALS? • But the world’s biggest multinational is now Chinese (Who is actually running ‘globalization’ now…?) • ‘Business’ is also your insurance company, your hairdresser and shoes mender and the guy who runs the bar round the corner - and the lady running an African market stall

  3. ABUSES BY PRIVATE MILITARY COMPANIES? • But the biggest of these now focus on ‘peacetime’ services, security services (eg guarding) and post-conflict services (retraining etc) as much as or more than on ‘front-line’, armed duties • The UN and EU use them regularly, so does Finland for services to its armed forces

  4. ‘PRIVATIZATION’? • Very true that trend in OECD (and ex-Communist) states has been to sell or delegate security-related functions to business: - Arms production+research - Nuclear and chemical industries - Sensitive medical research, drugs - Power and transport systems, IT - Prisons, hospitals etc

  5. AND OTHER RELATED TRENDS • State ‘outsourcing’ of specific business goods/services even in state-run areas • Multinationalization and single markets --> key business services often now from foreign firms (eg electricity supply, water, banking, media) • Modern conflict + other social violence more directly involves business

  6. BUT ALSO COUNTER-TRENDS…. • Trend in non-western countries to renew state control of key extractive and export branches (Russia+energy); and take over or regulate BANKS • All states tempted by protectionism esp ag foreign acquisition of strategic bits • Sovereign equity funds • At worst, state conflict over econ.assets

  7. CLASSIFYING BUSINESS ROLES (see handout) • Security and defence for business? • Business as part of the problem: direct action, carelessness, side-effects • Business’s special vulnerabilities or attractions as a target • Potential of business to help state and people in good ‘peacetime’ security and crisis handling

  8. SOME NORDIC EXAMPLES (besides ‘kreppa’) • Finnish doctrine of protecting ‘vital functions of society’ • Danish businesses abroad attacked over cartoons crisis • Icelandic business helped in tsunami and Lebanon evacuations • Swedish business hardly did, was excluded from new int.sec. policy

  9. BUT NOTE IMPORTANT VARIATIONS IN RANGE OF INTERACTIONS • In ‘North’ and ‘South’ • More state-run and more free-market economies • Countries with a single ‘elite’ or ‘establishment’ and those where politics and business are more separate (often on gender basis!)

  10. THEORETICAL RANGE OF SOLUTIONS To block ‘bad’ and maximise ‘ good’ business roles in security: 1)‘Stopping’ = prohibition, restriction 2)‘Law+regulation’ - (i) formal controls, standards (ii) control by contract 3)‘Convert them’ - use market and moral pressure, encourage self-regulation

  11. BUT NOT SO SIMPLE…. • Effective prohibition, regulation + even contract practice should now be global • How to bring in the S hemisphere? • Do we believe in self-regulation? (NB limitations of CSR) • Cannot overstress importance of subjective factors in p-p relations (see second handout)

  12. AFTER THE BREAK • We will talk through the application of the 3 sets of methods in two examples: • Dangerous bio-research in a W state • A company supplying military services in Iraq

  13. RECALL THE THREE TYPES OF SOLUTIONS • Prohibition (+ punishment) • Law, regulation, contract • Market + moral pressure --> self-regulation In practice obviously need a mixture…

  14. (i) AN ICELANDIC BIO-RESEARCH COMPANY • What might we want to forbid or punish? (is it for security or other reasons??)

  15. CASE (i) • What types of laws and regulations might we apply? On national or international basis - what institutions?

  16. CASE (i) • Which things would it be better to encourage the firm to do of its own accord? And how?

  17. (ii) PRIVATE MILITARY COMPANY IN IRAQ • What might we specifically forbid or exclude it from? What things might we punish it for and how? (and who is ‘we’?)

  18. CASE (ii) • (Say we have to use the company for armed guarding and escort duties) what kinds of law/regulation can we apply to minimize problems? How is the contract relevant?

  19. CASE (iii) • Does market and moral pressure have any place here? Does self-regulation?

  20. IF TIME: BANKS AND THE KREPPA?? • A case where all the methods seem to have failed……? But what was the real underlying problem??

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