Since conflict has existed people have been willing to determine who they will serve dependent on one thing, money. Throughout the ages these private soldiers were referred to as mercenaries. In the modern era mercenaries are "technically banned by international law, (yet) mercenaries remain active in nearly every ongoing conflict. But...they lack cohesion and discipline". Traditionally mercenaries operated as individuals, former soldiers looking for their next pay cheque; however there has been a re-developing of these types of people which has made them relatively useful in the international scene. Although there are several arguments about why there is no place for them in the modern battlefield, mercenaries are finding more and more opportunities to play their part.
During this essay I will endeavour to discuss why there is a place for mercenaries on the modern battlefront. I will start by defining mercenaries, and discussing the development of this term. I will then move onto describing the modern battlefield, before looking at the arguments for and against mercenaries.
Defining mercenaries
"The private provision of violence was a routine aspect of international relations before the twentieth century". Private soldiers whose loyalties were defined by whoever would pay them have been around for centuries. From the first conflict, there have always been those willing to choose a side based on financial benefit. These private soldiers can be described as mercenaries .The word itself, according to Merriam-Webster, means "one
that serves merely for wages; especially: a soldier hired into foreign service". To most people the term mercenary conjures up thoughts of cold calculating killers hiring themselves out to the highest bidder, prepared to do anything for anyone so long as the price was right. Often referred to as "soldiers of fortune", they "ran riot over the Africa continent in the 1960's" and developed a fairly poor reputation for themselves. However in this modern age mercenaries have moved from a lone individual working on their own as a gun for hire, to employees of a professional corporation. The term in itself has been repainted with the public relations brush too, redefining them as Private Military Firms (PMF).
"Since the US President...announced the end of 'major combat operations' in Iraq in May 2003...security contractors have flooded the country". It was during this time period that the term PMF was brought to international attention. PMF's were used in post conflict situations as the coalition forces sought to restore democracy to the people and help re-build their countries. During the post-conflict phase of the war and the attempts to restore democracy to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan a variety of civilian contractors, media personnel and Non-Government Organisations (NGOs) were involved. However because of the intense nature of where they were operating there were no guarantees of security. This is where PMFs were used to provide the necessary security for these people. The PMFs were operating from two angles. The first was contracts from the US Defence Force. The second was contracts from individual organisations. The key difference is that they were either employed by a state to fulfil the states military obligations that the state was unable to, or to an organisation to fulfil their security needs.
The modern battlefield
Conflict over time has been a continually developing and evolving concept. To explain this evolutionary process there are 4 different types of conflict that we have gone through. The first phase of this process is institutionalised war. These wars can be divided into two categories, those prior to 17th century, and those post 17th century. Conflicts prior to the 17th century were often fought between families, mercenaries, and other groups, the reason for which was often petty and personal including property rights and succession rights. However the 17th century ushered in the development of state based warfare. The purpose of these conflicts was often territorial protection, advancement of diplomatic ties, and building an empire. The battle could only be described as choreographed as people attempted to kill one another in a prim and proper fashion. World War II signalled the next phase of conflict evolution; total war. Total war can only be applied to conflicts equal to the magnitude of World War II because of the huge loss of life (over 50 million people), the use of nuclear weapons, and the use of extremely inhumane tactics and the attempted genocide of European Jew's.
Post World War II until the early nineties was the next step, with wars of a third kind, or people's wars. These were often wars of liberation and independence, as civilians revolted against their colonial oppressors and sought independence once again. Probably the most famous of this was the Vietnam War which started between the Vietnamese and the French before the USA intervened. These conflicts often lacked territorial boundaries, and were lacking in traditional organisational elements such as uniforms and fixed bases. The current stage of this evolution (as opposed to the final stage) is the new wars. These wars are moving away from state centred conflicts, and are about different groups of actors coming together over an extreme ideology. They often occur in and around weak states. Examples of these include the conflicts throughout Africa and the older conflicts throughout Eastern Europe where politically extreme ideology's have unified groups of individuals and has seen them enter into horrifically brutal conflicts not against states, but groups of civilians, specifically Rwanda and Bosnia.
In the modern battlefield the role of the mercenary comes in two forms. The first role is direct action missions. Direct action missions are mercenaries being utilised to directly engage in contact with the enemy. This would mean that they were effectively being hired to be the soldiers involved in the conflict. The second role is that of post-conflict security. During my interview with an employee of a PMF he claimed that "you've got companies like US Aid, NGO's or the UN and they can't operate without some sort of security...it's a necessary evil to get the job done". In most post-conflict scenarios the areas are often considered to still be at risk to conflict flaring up which means that a lot of civilian contractors working on rebuilding the area, NGO's working on providing social services to the people, and media organisations providing coverage of the post conflict zone are in need of security. This is where mercenaries are being utilised either as contractors to state military to protect their civilian contractors, or to private media organisations like CNN or NGO's like Red Cross.
Arguments against mercenaries
On the surface mercenaries are expensive. Most contractors are earning 10 times what they would as a public solider, which begs the question of why? Why spend so much money on what the army should be able to provide. Given that the army's current role is to operate in conflict, surely we would be able to train them to operate in the post conflict zone too, or even have specialist divisions within the military to come in and provide the necessary security work that is required. In O'Hanlon's article on the Future of Humanitarian Intervention he specifically highlights the redefining of state based military to be more peace keeping and security focussed. Although he does not do this to avoid using private contractors, he does argue that "...some 10,000 to 20,000 specialized troops should be added (to the US Defence Force) – at a cost of about $1 billion a year, less than half of 1 percent of the (US) defence budget". O'Hanlon goes on to suggest "that is not too high a price to pay", which leaves you with the question U.S. Senator Carl Levin posed: "How is it in our nations interest to have civilian contractors, rather than military personnel, performing vital national security functions...in a war zone?"
According to Arthur S Miller (as quoted by Singer) "Democratic government is responsible government – which means accountable government...(the use of private firm's places) the influence over, and sometimes even control of, important decisions one step further away from the public and their elected officials." During the constant debates between the efficiencies of government departments and private organisations the area of accountability is one where government departments come out on top. Government departments are responsible to the public, and are held accountable by the elected officials of the public. Private organisations, on the other hand, are accountable to share holders, and at the end of the day are held accountable according to levels of financial success. The same can be said for the scenario of mercenaries or state military. In the case of mercenaries their levels of accountability and responsibility are far less than that of state military. This should be of concern for the public. Given the amount of resource being invested into mercenaries, they should be held accountable to the same standard and level of the military, however they're not.
One of the greatest elements working against mercenaries is the concept of patriotism. Because of the level of finance involved and business like nature of the industry it would be fair to say that mercenaries are about getting the job done for the least amount of cost, and for the highest profit. Although modern PMF's claim to work for reputable governments in fear of harming future contracts a "...high, single-shot payoff might prove too great a temptation". Conversely state military are looking to get the job done to the highest standard possible because they are representing their country. For mercenaries the work is about the money, it is just a job and the only person they are serving is the state or organisation willing to hand them their next pay cheque. However for state military they are in it to serve their country, which is evidenced when you compare the vast differences between the pay rates and working conditions. As a current employee of a PMF in Afghanistan put it "you can go over there serving for a tenth of what you get...with more risk for yourself, or you can go over with less risk to yourself and earn 10 times as much". For example a mercenary can earn up to ten times what they would earn as a soldier of the state, and are less likely to be injured or killed; which suggests that soldiers of the state are in it for more than the remuneration.
Arguments for mercenaries
The concept of mercenaries as a business industry has absolutely bloomed in recent times. Initially small groups of soldiers would form up after retiring from state military service and source themselves work wherever they could. Now there are multinational corporations specialising in providing security and other vital military skills to states and private organisations operating in post conflict zones. Given the level of power these states and private organisations are placing in the hands of mercenaries they have had to become far more professional in their approach to completing their tasks. The increase in the level of professionalism enables states like the USA and media organisations like CNN to utilise mercenaries to fulfil tasks efficiently and effectively instead of leaving the tasks up to state based military and local law enforcement. This was highlighted by Singer as he defined this transformation as mercenaries operating in a "modern corporate business form".
The most common role of the mercenary in current times is that of security. Mercenaries are used to provide security in conflict zones, above and beyond what local law enforcement agencies are able to provide to non-military personnel like the media, NGO's, and civilian contractors. By using mercenaries to provide this additional level of security the military forces working within the country are able to utilise their time engaging the enemy and helping to restore order while being released from the job of "babysitting" civilians, a job which an employee of a PMF described the US Army found "annoying" because they "get in the way". This enables state funded military to focus in on utilising their skills and resources to fulfilling the task at hand, and not being side tracked by keeping an eye on civilian workers.
During the Cold War both the USA and the United Soviet States of Russia (USSR) invested trillions into the development of their armed forces in preparation for a massive militaristic confrontation that would ultimately never occur. Because of the perceived threat and the volume of resources poured into the development of these state based militaries both states were left with excess volumes of equipment and personnel; and ultimately huge annual expenditure to keep these maintained. As a result both states had to significantly downgrade their personnel and sell off excess equipment. This meant that all of a sudden both countries had huge volumes of former servicemen and women dropping out of work and looking for new careers. Naturally the effects on the economy were detrimental and this is an example where mercenaries could have been utilised to limit over-expenditure. Had both the USA and the USSR had mercenaries they could call on to employ should a conflict occur then it would have enabled both states to invest less in building up their stock piles of weapons and trained service people.
The United Nations (UN) is frequently cited as being ineffective and unproductive in the context of entering into conflict scenarios and putting a stop to them. This is quite a problem because according to O'Hanlon "American Presidents, UN Security Councils, and western publics will almost always want to do something when thousands or tens of thousands of innocent people are dying as a result of war". Quite often the UN falters because one of the Security Council permanent members (USA, France, Russia, England, China) will veto any action because of their states own interests in the conflicts, for example sale of weapons to the side of the conflict that the UN will not be supporting. In this scenario states own interests and foreign diplomacy hinder the UN from being able to make a positive difference before conflicts get out of hand. This is where utilising mercenaries could make an improvement. The UN would be able to avoid utilising troops from states, and instead use those with no political or diplomatic ties. The reasons this would be successful would be because of the avoidance of "public debate or legislative controls, and...undertake...a much more rational foreign policy". This has been tried before by states and it was very effective as 140 mercenaries were able to clear out an entire country of rebels. However this example is often referred to in a negative light because the currency the mercenaries received their payment in was conflict diamonds. I personally believe that this needs to be overlooked as a part of the wider picture, given the success the mercenaries had on behalf of the state.
As I have highlighted there are concerns around mercenaries' levels of accountability, the cost of hiring them, and their motivations for doing the job. However I believe that the modern battlefield provides huge opportunities for states, private organisations, and NGOs to utilise mercenaries in a productive capacity. In conflict scenarios mercenaries are able to be utilised to greater affect because of their limited diplomatic ties. The post-conflict environment mercenaries are able to be utilised to provide protection on behalf of states, private organisations, and NGOs as they are attempting to rebuild the country. This enables states to release their military from the security detail and to allow them to focus on protecting the state instead of individuals. It also enables private organisations and NGOs to operate in dangerous post-conflict zones with the necessary level of security that they require. Mercenaries have a dark past, however their recent corporatisation coupled with the changing face of the modern battlefield provides justification for their use in pivotal roles in either conflict or post-conflict environments.
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