ImTheCaptain
I disagree with you
pretty interesting interview piece about the rise in mercenary forces around the world.
....
McFate: I think one of the inherent problems is one of safety. Unsupervised or unemployed mercenaries become bandits, or they engage in racketeering. Meaning they come into a town and say, “Give us a hundred thousand dollars, and we won’t sack your village this month, and we’ll come back next month too.” And that happened in the Middle Ages. So this is the problem—they’re really unsafe. Especially when they’re not employed. And then how do you get rid of them?
"Mercenaries are also useful for some clients because they’re relatively apolitical. They’re loyal to the paycheck."
In theory, a state should have a monopoly of force in its territory to uphold the rule of law. Which is why after the Treaty of Westphalia you started to [see] mercenaries become outlawed by states, because they didn’t want the competition, they were monopolizing force quite literally. And now what’s happening with all sorts of fragile states and conflict states in the world is that they’ve lost the monopoly of force. And the last 25 years, you’ve seen the growth of mercenaries. Slowly, first underground, and then a little larger, and of course the U.S. now legitimized the industry [in] Iraq and Afghanistan, and now we’ve got Nigeria. And tomorrow we’ll have something else. You know, Putin is using Chechen mercenaries in Ukraine, allegedly. Who’s going to tell him you can’t do that after 10 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan? I wouldn’t be surprised if the U.S. used private military companies to train Iraqi forces to fight ISIS. The horse has fled the barn on this norm of no mercenaries, no private force.
Gilsinan: Did it ever really go away?
McFate: Mercenaries were always a part of the system, just in the 19th century and 20th century when the Westphalian system was at its zenith, they went underground, it became [a] black market for mercenaries. And we saw them come up in the ‘50s and ‘60s during the African wars of decolonization, but they were very taboo. It wasn’t until after the Cold War that we started to see them become more public, the famous one being Executive Outcomes in South Africa. And now we’re starting to see real mercenaries appearing all over the world in conflict markets. Extractive industries are hiring them, NGOs are hiring them, someday the UN might hire them.
As Americans, we think of it as an American phenomenon. It’s not. These companies, at least the last 10 years, they had American faces, but when I was in DynCorp doing this type of work, a lot of my colleagues were from all over the world. And we’re seeing a proliferation around the world, we’re seeing ex-Latin American special forces showing up in the Gulf States.
Gilsinan: That gets to the question of what happens when they go home.
McFate: What happens after the contract, right? That’s always the question. Some will stay in place, look for new opportunities, or make new opportunities, which happened in the Middle Ages. In the case of these private military companies in Afghanistan and Iraq, a lot of those people came from around the world, they go home to, say, Guatemala, and they can start their own private military company there. We’re also seeing warlords in these places model themselves as private military companies. The end of the book talks about what this will look like, and I call it "durable disorder." A world that will have mercenaries in it will be a world with more war, because mercenaries are incentivized to do that.
Gilsinan: More war but smaller wars?
McFate: Yes. It won’t be like World War III. We call this irregular war, but that’s a misnomer. There’s no such thing as regular versus irregular war, that’s a real Westphalian construction. Most of the wars around the world are dirty, nasty, elongated, in the mud, [smaller] scale. And that’s what’s going to be stoked. Now the question is, can a mercenary outfit suck the U.S. into a war someplace? In 2008, when Mia Farrow wanted to hire Blackwater to stage a humanitarian intervention in Darfur, one of the concerns was, if an American person hired a private military company to go into Darfur, could that draw the U.S. into a war with Sudan? And the answer is, of course it could. That group of people at that point was pretty circumspect, but I can imagine a future where some crazy tycoon hires a private military company to do something outrageous that is for a good cause, but something happens and now the U.S. has got to go rescue people, or stop a situation from getting worse.
Technology allows [private armed groups] to punch above their weight class. And technology’s ever cheaper, ever more available, and so drones and other types of technologies—weapons systems, night-vision goggles—that’s all on the open market as well. So we’ve got an open market for force, swishing around with these markets of technologies. Supply and demand are going to find each other, and that allows a very small group of people to do some big damage
....
McFate: I think one of the inherent problems is one of safety. Unsupervised or unemployed mercenaries become bandits, or they engage in racketeering. Meaning they come into a town and say, “Give us a hundred thousand dollars, and we won’t sack your village this month, and we’ll come back next month too.” And that happened in the Middle Ages. So this is the problem—they’re really unsafe. Especially when they’re not employed. And then how do you get rid of them?
"Mercenaries are also useful for some clients because they’re relatively apolitical. They’re loyal to the paycheck."
In theory, a state should have a monopoly of force in its territory to uphold the rule of law. Which is why after the Treaty of Westphalia you started to [see] mercenaries become outlawed by states, because they didn’t want the competition, they were monopolizing force quite literally. And now what’s happening with all sorts of fragile states and conflict states in the world is that they’ve lost the monopoly of force. And the last 25 years, you’ve seen the growth of mercenaries. Slowly, first underground, and then a little larger, and of course the U.S. now legitimized the industry [in] Iraq and Afghanistan, and now we’ve got Nigeria. And tomorrow we’ll have something else. You know, Putin is using Chechen mercenaries in Ukraine, allegedly. Who’s going to tell him you can’t do that after 10 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan? I wouldn’t be surprised if the U.S. used private military companies to train Iraqi forces to fight ISIS. The horse has fled the barn on this norm of no mercenaries, no private force.
Gilsinan: Did it ever really go away?
McFate: Mercenaries were always a part of the system, just in the 19th century and 20th century when the Westphalian system was at its zenith, they went underground, it became [a] black market for mercenaries. And we saw them come up in the ‘50s and ‘60s during the African wars of decolonization, but they were very taboo. It wasn’t until after the Cold War that we started to see them become more public, the famous one being Executive Outcomes in South Africa. And now we’re starting to see real mercenaries appearing all over the world in conflict markets. Extractive industries are hiring them, NGOs are hiring them, someday the UN might hire them.
As Americans, we think of it as an American phenomenon. It’s not. These companies, at least the last 10 years, they had American faces, but when I was in DynCorp doing this type of work, a lot of my colleagues were from all over the world. And we’re seeing a proliferation around the world, we’re seeing ex-Latin American special forces showing up in the Gulf States.
Gilsinan: That gets to the question of what happens when they go home.
McFate: What happens after the contract, right? That’s always the question. Some will stay in place, look for new opportunities, or make new opportunities, which happened in the Middle Ages. In the case of these private military companies in Afghanistan and Iraq, a lot of those people came from around the world, they go home to, say, Guatemala, and they can start their own private military company there. We’re also seeing warlords in these places model themselves as private military companies. The end of the book talks about what this will look like, and I call it "durable disorder." A world that will have mercenaries in it will be a world with more war, because mercenaries are incentivized to do that.
Gilsinan: More war but smaller wars?
McFate: Yes. It won’t be like World War III. We call this irregular war, but that’s a misnomer. There’s no such thing as regular versus irregular war, that’s a real Westphalian construction. Most of the wars around the world are dirty, nasty, elongated, in the mud, [smaller] scale. And that’s what’s going to be stoked. Now the question is, can a mercenary outfit suck the U.S. into a war someplace? In 2008, when Mia Farrow wanted to hire Blackwater to stage a humanitarian intervention in Darfur, one of the concerns was, if an American person hired a private military company to go into Darfur, could that draw the U.S. into a war with Sudan? And the answer is, of course it could. That group of people at that point was pretty circumspect, but I can imagine a future where some crazy tycoon hires a private military company to do something outrageous that is for a good cause, but something happens and now the U.S. has got to go rescue people, or stop a situation from getting worse.
Technology allows [private armed groups] to punch above their weight class. And technology’s ever cheaper, ever more available, and so drones and other types of technologies—weapons systems, night-vision goggles—that’s all on the open market as well. So we’ve got an open market for force, swishing around with these markets of technologies. Supply and demand are going to find each other, and that allows a very small group of people to do some big damage
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