As we debate how many more troops to dispatch to Afghanistan, it might be a good time to also debate just how far we’ve already gone in hiring private contractors to do jobs that the State Department, Pentagon and C.I.A. once did on their own. A good place to start is with the Middlebury College professor Allison Stanger’s new book on this subject, “One Nation Under Contract: The Outsourcing of American Power and the Future of Foreign Policy.”

Image Thomas L. Friedman Credit... Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Every year, more and more of the core business of national security  diplomacy, development, defense and even intelligence  “is being shifted into the hands of private contractors  much more than our public realizes,” Stanger said to me. One big reason why we’ve been able to fight the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq with so few allies is because we’ve basically hired the help.

“Afghanistan and Iraq,” explained Stanger, “are our first contractors’ wars, differing from previous interventions in their unprecedented reliance on the private sector for all aspects of their execution. According to the Congressional Research Service, contractors in 2009 accounted for 48 percent of the D.O.D. work force in Iraq and 57 percent in Afghanistan. And the Pentagon is not the only government agency deploying contractors; the State Department and Usaid make extensive use of them as well. Contractors provide security for key personnel and sites, including our embassies; feed, clothe and house our troops; train army and police units; and even oversee other contractors. Without a multinational contractor force to fill the gap, we would need a draft to execute these twin interventions.”

Or, we would need real allies.

I am not against outsourcing, improving government efficiency or hiring the best people to perform specialized tasks. But we’ve fallen into a pattern of outsourcing some of the very core tasks of government  interrogation, security, democracy promotion. As more and more of this government work gets contracted and then subcontracted  or as Stanger puts it, “when money and instructions change hands multiple times in a foreign country”  the public interest can get lost and abuse and corruption get invited in. We’re also building a contractor-industrial-complex in Washington that has an economic interest in foreign expeditions. Doesn’t make it wrong; does make you want to be watchful.

In 2008, notes Stanger, roughly 80 percent of the State Department’s requested budget went out the door in the form of contracts and grants. The Army’s primary support contractor in Iraq, KBR, reportedly has some 17,000 direct-hire employees there.