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Rates of suicide, divorce, and domestic violence spiked among Servicemembers during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. A lot of American contractors I met signed up because they wanted their life back. Almost all mercenaries have military or national police backgrounds.
There are no mercenary basic training camps, so everyone starts somewhere else, usually in a national army. Some of the larger military companies are associated with particular military units. In the U. A lot of military firms embed dog whistles to signal their credentials to attract high-end troops. Modern soldiers of fortune have a choice between overt or covert mercenary groups, and it is uncertain which one will dominate. This is important because it may influence future war, specifically who, how, and why people fight.
Overt private warriors seek legitimacy and wish to work in the open. They rebuff the mercenary label and call themselves private security companies, advocating full transparency and accountability according to the International Organization for Standardization ISO and ISO 39 business standards. Another facilitating organization is the International Code of Conduct Association ICOCA , a Swiss initiative that establishes industry standards that comply with human rights and international law.
Government and big oil companies are more likely to hire you. However, overt actors may disappear. Or, put another way, it is busywork good for public relations and little else.
A few CEOs confided in me their frustration with the certification process as too much burden for too little reward. Like corporate social responsibility, companies will abandon these efforts if the cost-benefit ratio turns negative. The overt business model is struggling, as marquee clients do not seem more likely to hire certified security providers.
This is driving the entire industry underground, as it seeks new opportunities from clients not interested in transparency. War could get medieval. The only way to prevent this future is counterintuitive.
Governments, international organizations, NGOs, and other clients who claim they want a responsible private security sector should consider employing overt actors, rather than let them literally slip to the dark side. Customers can pool their market power, like a cartel, to enforce their best practices. This would shape the industry in fundamental ways, but this opportunity is fading. The covert side of the market for force is far more dangerous.
Mercenaries are hired for plausible deniability and therefore operate in the shadows. Few know the identity of the mercenaries operating in Syria, Ukraine, Nigeria, Yemen, and elsewhere. Fewer still know who exactly retained them and what they paid. Underground soldiers of fortune are employed for many reasons. Some consumers, like oil companies, want mercenaries because they have no security forces of their own and renting them may be preferable to relying on corrupt and incompetent host nation forces.
Others, like Nigeria, have security forces but need a niche capability, such as Mil Mi Hind attack helicopters or special operations forces teams. Still, others hire mercenaries to do things they do not want their own people doing, like human rights abuse. Historically, plausible deniability has always been a strong selling point of soldiers for hire. How do you hire mercenaries? Overt actors seek public channels, such as their Web site and Internet job sites.
Covert operations are a word-of-mouth business. Mercenaries form informal networks of shared military background, contacts, cultural identity, language, and so forth. When you make a deal with a client and initiate an operation, you recruit by tapping your network. Trusted colleagues also recruit and vouch for their hires. Contrary to Hollywood depictions, reputation is the primary currency in the mercenary world, with money second. Those who forget this get burned. In , mercenaries attempted a takeover of oil-rich Equatorial Guinea.
Known as the Wonga Coup, it failed because of poor operational security. An individual recruited for the coup told South African, British, and American authorities of the plan, leading to the arrest of most of the mercenaries. A key problem in a word-of-mouth business are charlatans, and the mercenary world has many.
Good recruiters can spot them with a few qualifying questions, such as: What unit were you in? What years? Who was your commander? What operations did you conduct? Did you know Sergeant Bill Smith? What was he like? Also, detailed questions about training works well. For example, if someone claims they graduated from the U. You cannot fake it. However, this method does not scale well for large recruitment drives.
There are two ways to find work as a covert mercenary. When you make a deal with a client and initiate an operation, you first recruit by tapping your network. Mercenaries form informal networks based on shared military background, contacts, cultural identity, language, and so forth. China has a small market share but could dominate the industry by sheer numbers should it grow into an active network. Alternatively, a lone soldier of fortune could show up at a conflict market war zone and look for vacancies.
Some hope Latin America might open up, given the drug wars, or the UN might hire peacekeepers. Unfortunately, the UN suffers a bad reputation as a delinquent payer. However, this can be a dodgy way to find work. It is better to be pulled into a contract by a trusted associate than submitting to happenstance.
Worse, you could be mistaken for a journalist going undercover for a story. Covert mercenaries hug the darkness and may thump those who threaten to expose them. Conflict areas are not known for their rule of law, and few ask about people who disappear. Outside observers often assume mercenaries get paid huge sums of money. This is inaccurate. Overt actors pay less than covert ones but offer steadier work. During the Iraq War, contractors typically made about twice their old military salary, which is not much if you think about the risks.
For example, wounded contractors get immediate first aid but are otherwise sent home to fend for themselves. Nor do contractors enjoy retirement or veteran benefits. The money on the covert side is bigger, but so are the risks. An elite mercenary can earn four figures a week—usually in U.
One of the oldest problems of the trade is contract enforcement. In other words, getting paid. There are no courts to sue in, and consequently mercenaries and their masters swindle each other. The Middle Ages and early Renaissance were full of such scandal, as Machiavelli attests. Today, some mercenaries and clients overcome the problem of trust by forming joint ventures in mutual business interests. This may sound odd but it aligns their profit motives. More recently, the Syrian government offered oil and mining concessions to Russian oil companies and their mercenaries, such as Wagner Group, on the condition that they liberate them from IS.
Going into business together creates a sticky bond that helps guarantee good behavior all around. In truth, the distance between overt and covert actors is minimal: If you can do one, then you can do the other. The qualifications are similar and the core personnel swappable.
The main difference between them is the nature of contract and market circumstances. Few have heard of private intelligence companies, and that is by design. They offer investigative services for corporate due diligence or litigation support. However, a few are agents of plausible deniability, providing rare skills and acting as cut outs for clients.
Because of this they shun publicity and advertise by word of mouth with a minimal Web presence. These are not Ph. Who needs their own CIA? Anyone dealing in dangerous places where everyone lies to you—for example, oil companies operating in the Middle East or multinational corporations working in Africa.
The financial services industry hires them for tough due diligence investigations in places such as Nigeria or Russia, where corruption is endemic. Insurance companies use them for political risk analysis, especially regarding foreign country stability, nationalization of client assets, and likelihood of armed conflict.
Law firms retain them for litigation support, and the super wealthy hire them for whatever they want. They are sometimes hired to spy on competitors and perform dirty tricks. Governments are the one client this industry will refuse. Private intelligence companies support commercial diplomacy that minimizes official involvement, and accepting government contracts would cost them private-sector customers. In terms of staff, most private intelligence agencies are small.
Many are founded by ex-spooks, but their core staff often includes former journalists, FBI investigators, corporate lawyers, ex-military, and fresh college graduates. Stringers can range from a retired CIA chief of station to an overseas journalist to a street urchin.
Fees are expensive; a monthly retainer will cost you four to five figures and sometimes more, not including expenses. What private intelligence companies can accomplish is impressive and disturbing in equal measure. Like military companies, private intelligence firms shroud their offerings in euphemisms such as competitive intelligence, risk consulting, security management, strategic advisory services, exotic due diligence, and risk avoidance.
Needless to say, these firms operate in the moral and legal gray areas of world affairs, similar to mercenaries. Perhaps this is one of the gravitational pulls between the two industries.
What little the public knows about private intelligence comes from their failures, which often makes national news. While not the best metric of success, it does provide insight into what these firms do:. These are the failures of private intelligence; their successes are impressive and terrifying. Expect both the mercenary and private intelligence industries to grow commensurately with wealthy nonstate actors in the coming decades.
The global 1 percent is evolving into a new class of world power as military and intelligence capabilities are privatized and available in the marketplace. Already they are more powerful than most states. Can anyone really argue that Gabon is more influential in world affairs than ExxonMobil simply because it is a state?
Now ExxonMobil can have its own intelligence service and army too, making it even more powerful. This introduces the possibility of wars without states—private wars—a concept inconceivable to most national security leaders. This is the danger. You cannot win wars you do not understand. Privatizing war distorts warfare in shocking ways.
If conflict is commoditized, then the logic of the marketplace and the strategies of the souk apply to war. A souk is an Arab open market, and it is a good analogy for how private wars work. In a souk, everything is up for sale and must be bartered. Anything goes. Fraud, deception, deceit, and hard bargaining are the watchwords.
But so are value, rare finds, and exotic merchandise. Treasures are to be had, and for cheap—if one knows what one is doing. If not, expect to be scammed; this unregulated space is not for amateurs. There are no refunds, returns, or exchanges. Privatizing war changes warfare in dangerous ways. First, private war has its own logic: Clausewitz meets Adam Smith, the father of economics. For-profit warriors are not bound by political considerations or patriotism, one of their chief selling points.
They are market actors and their main restraint is not the laws of war but the laws of economics. The implications of this are far-reaching. This introduces new strategic possibilities known to CEOs but alien to generals, putting us at risk. Second, private war lowers the barriers to entry for war. Mercenaries allow clients to fight without having their own blood on the gambling table, and this creates moral hazard among consumers.
Mercenaries are rented forces, and clients may be more carefree about going to war if their people do not have to bleed. Mercenary leaders might not care either if they do not have to fight themselves and instead order others into combat. Private warriors are expendable humans, and this emboldens recklessness that could start and elongate wars. Third, private war breeds war. It is simple supply and demand as mercenaries and their masters feed off each other.
The marketplace works like any other: Mercenaries and clients seek each other out, negotiate prices, and wage war for private gain.
This prompts other buyers to do the same in self-defense. As soldiers of fortune flood the market, the price for their services drops and new buyers hire them for additional private wars. Clausewitz observed that the nature of absolute war is escalation; privatized warfare exemplifies this because it is fueled by the profit motive.
On the supply side, mercenaries do not want to work themselves out of a job. Instead, they are incentivized to start and elongate conflicts for profit. Out-of-work mercenaries become marauders, preying on the countryside for sustenance and artificially generating demand for their services.
Sometimes they engage in racketeering and extortion of the defenseless. There is abundant historical evidence for this. On the demand side, the availability of mercenaries means buyers who had not previously contemplated military action can now do so. The world has already seen multinational corporations, governments, and millionaires hire mercenaries in the past decade; that was not the case two decades ago.
The availability of private force lowers the barriers of entry into armed conflict for those who can afford it, tempting even more war. Fourth, private war creates a security dilemma. In such a dangerous environment buyers retain mercenaries for purely defensive purposes, but this can backfire.
Other buyers watch this and suspect the worst, namely a surprise attack, and procure twice as many mercenaries for protection. This prompts the first buyer, who also assumes the worst, to buy even more mercenaries, and soon an arms race ensues. The danger is when all sides escalate and they unleash their forces. This lateral escalation creates a security dilemma because people who do not wish to fight end up doing so anyway. More belligerents are possible in private wars compared to public ones, and therefore there is more chance of this happening.
Fifth, weak contract enforcement and double-crossing is the bane of private warfare. When mercenaries and their masters have a dispute, there are no courts of law to sue for breach of contract.
Instead, things are settled by blood and treachery. Buyers who do not pay their bills may become victims of their own mercenaries unless they hire a bigger mercenary outfit to chase them off. But this also invites bigger problems. Since there are no laws of war in private warfare, market failure in this context means savagery. Wars without states is the antithesis of conventional warfare and why modern militaries are unprepared for it.
Private warfare has been with us for millennia, even though it is forgotten by modern strategists. In a free market for force, business strategies meld with military ones. In other words, private wars are driven less by politics than by political economy. Owing to this nuance, the conventional strategic thinker will have problems identifying private wars, much less devising strategies to defeat them.
Not all wars without states will be marketized, but many will. Some wars will be political, fought by national armies or insurgents, but they might turn to mercenary help as it becomes available. Modern strategic thought has no logic or grammar for private war; its goals might not even be political in nature. This must be remedied because private warfare is an emerging trend. In terms of strategy for private war, the Italian Wars — are instructive.
They were dominated by mercenaries since no one could afford their own standing army. Machiavelli tried this and Florence paid for his imprudence in blood.
The Italian Wars represent private warfare in extremis , but maximal examples make phenomenon more transparent. Still, the parallels between then and now are striking. Both modern and early contractors sold their services to the highest or most powerful bidder for profit and operated in military units rather than as lone wolf mercenaries often depicted by Hollywood.
Both filled their ranks with professional men of arms drawn from different countries and loyal primarily to the paycheck. Both have functioned as private armies, usually offering land-based combat skills rather than naval or aerial capabilities and deploying force in a military manner rather than as law enforcement or police. The Italian Wars teach us that cunning and deception are the watchwords of private warfare, therefore lending itself more to Sun Tzu than Clausewitz.
A full historical analysis of the Italian Wars is beyond the scope of this study, but key points can be gleaned. The marketplace demands an asymmetry of strategy.
Buyers have ample opportunity to swindle mercenaries. Sometimes, clients hired a larger mercenary group on a short-term contract to chase off or kill unpaid mercenaries. Wealthy clients can also wield market power to change the winds of war. For example, they can buy all the mercenaries available in a region, driving prices up, then dump them on the market, driving prices down and creating mayhem for enemies who are dependent on hired guns for survival.
Rich actors can bankrupt adversaries by stoking a mercenary arms race or outspending rivals in a war of attrition. The mercenary labor pool is global, allowing longer wars of attrition. Mercenaries enable strategies of cunning and deception.
This is useful for conducting wars of atrocity: torture, assassination, intimidation operations, terrorism, civilian massacres, high collateral damage missions, ethnic cleansing, and genocide.
Some clients might prefer to outsource human rights violations rather than have their troops caught in the act. Alternately, one can hire mercenaries for mimicry operations to frame enemies for massacres, terrorism, and other atrocities that provoke a backlash.
Knowing the high danger of a mission, a client can misrepresent the threat so that mercenary casualties will be extreme. Once they have achieved the mission the buyer cuts them loose and does not pay them.
They will be too weak to challenge the client. There are also amoral hedging strategies. For example, a buyer might contract multiple mercenary units to pursue the same objective without telling them. Each uses different strategic approaches, sometimes working at cross purposes. The client rewards the first unit that completes the mission and the rest are cut loose, unpaid for their sacrifices.
Lastly, a client can secretly hire multiple mercenary units to kill each other, thinning out their numbers and making them easier to control or swindle. Mercenaries can also cheat their masters.
This includes playing multiple potential clients off one another to foster mistrust that leads to more war contracts. Then there is the classic shakedown strategy: either blackmailing their client for more money at a crucial moment or selling out the client to the enemy for a greater return. Bribery was a powerful weapon during the Italian Wars. Force providers can also act as a cartel by secretly cutting deals among each other and negotiating a war outcome that benefits all mercenaries at the expense of clients.
Between contracts, mercenaries often sustain themselves through banditry, destabilizing whole regions. For them, it has the added benefit of artificially generating demand for their protection services. This can lead to extortion and racketeering. They threaten to lay waste to a community unless it pays for protection money, similar to the Mafia.
Then they try to establish payments on a rotating basis and raise prices whenever possible. Mergers and acquisitions occur in the market for force. One approach is for larger force providers to buy smaller one, giving them market power. Alternatively, they can kill off the competition and become monopolists so they can raise prices.
Another strategy is praetorianism, a term deriving from the infamous Praetorian Guard, the imperial bodyguard of the Roman emperors established by Augustus Caesar. During its year existence, it assassinated 14 emperors, appointed 5, and even sold the office to the highest bidder on one occasion. Mercenaries can hold a weak client hostage and bleed him dry of wealth for as long as possible and then look for a new host when finished.
Alternately, they can establish a warlord kingdom to extract wealth from the area. This is especially attractive in highly volatile regions rich in natural resources.
Or they can capture a high-value asset like an oil field or small city and sell it back to the owner. When complete, they can ask for a contract to protect it from other mercenaries.
These are just a sampling of strategies peculiar to private warfare. Not one of them is taught in war colleges or studied in civilian security studies programs, leading to a gap in our strategic IQ. Private wars do not behave like public ones and some of the best weapons may not fire bullets. It is possible to undermine mercenaries and their masters, but not by using traditional war strategies. Mercenaries are back, with nothing to impede their growth.
To date, Washington has ignored this trend—a dangerous oversight. Mercenaries may not directly threaten the U. Annihilating them is a losing strategy. You can kill individuals but not the market conditions that give rise to mercenarism in the first place. Trying to kill your way out of this problem is playing Whac-A-Mole for mercenaries.
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