Mercenaries – the New Way to Fight Wars

We tend to think of war as a national army against a national army. But wars have changed dramatically since Iraq. Mercenaries are more powerful than most realize, which is a grave oversight. Those who assume they are cheap imitations of national armed forces do not have a clue about what is taking place. For-profit warriors are a wholly different species of fighter. Perhaps the first time anyone even heard about some private military company was Russia’s Wagner Group, which was more heavily armed than the traditional national military. They are fully armed multinational corporations, more so than the Marine Corps. Their employees are recruited from different countries, and profitability is everything. Patriotism is unimportant and sometimes a liability. Unsurprisingly, mercenaries do not fight conventionally, and traditional war strategies used against them often backfire.

If we look at the Iraq War, the US Department of Defense employed 155,826 private contractors in Iraq. In 2016, 1 in 4 U.S. armed personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan was a private contractor. This meant that the war was being outsourced, and neither scholars nor the media seemed to pay attention. Looking at the stats provides an interesting perspective. Between 2006 and 2016, we do not even know how many private contractors/mercenaries perished in Iraq. Looking at who does this work reveals that they are predominantly white man in their 40s. Most are veterans with significant military experience who were former officers, and about half of them are Special Forces veterans. They are more likely to have a college degree than their active-duty counterparts but less likely than their fellow veterans in the general population.

This degree of privatization of military troops is unprecedented in modern warfare. The Neocons used Biden to circumvent Congress to create World War III, deploying private armies to negate Congressional approval. If they are private contractors, then the Neocons can tell them to invade Russia or even New York City since they are NOT actually official military personnel.

In terms of Biden signing private contracts, one federal department reigned supreme. In 2020, the Department of Defense awarded more money in federal contracts than all other government agencies combined. And one study found that nearly half of defense spending for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan went to private contractors. President Joe Biden signed a record-shattering military budget in 2021, topping 2020. Even after America’s complicated withdrawal from Afghanistan, congress approved the biggest defense spending bill in history. Why if we pulled out? Ah – Ukraine!

The cost of Iraq and Afghanistan directly was $1.6 trillion. Add the ongoing interest costs compounded, and by 2032, the costs of that war alone will reach more than $3 trillion. Why use private mercenaries? Guess what? There are no VA benefits and pensions. Some may earn even up to $2,000 per day. On March 19, 2003, Paul Wolfowitz, then deputy defense secretary and a leading proponent of the war, told a Congressional committee: “We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon.” That was not even close to being true. But these people love to sell war all the time.

While they Say Prostitution is the Oldest Profession, Mercenaries are certainly the second-oldest

The historian Arrian informs us that Greek mercenary hoplites served Persia in defending against Alexander the Great in the closing stages of the Battle of Granicus. Both Celtic and Greek mercenaries served in the Carthaginian garrison at Lilybaeum while it was besieged by the Romans during the First Punic War. Indeed, much of military history from ancient times includes privatized armies. The word “mercenary” comes from the Latin merces, “wages” or “pay.”

Since ancient times, employing mercenaries to fight wars has been routine throughout most of military history. Xenophon’s famous army of Greek mercenaries known as the Ten Thousand (401–399 BC) were mostly mercenaries. Hannibal’s sixty-thousand-strong army, included Greek and Celtic mercenaries, who marched with elephants over the Alps to attack Rome from the north. We also know that Darius II (423–405) of Persia supported Sparta with money and probably mercenaries in the Peloponnesian War against Athens. Very clever, he used the jealousy and hatred of Sparta regarding Athens to reduce the Greek threat, not much different than our Neocons using Ukraine against Russia.

Here is a coin from central Italy depicting an African mercenary and an elephant. Rome also regularly employed mercenaries, and even by the European Middle Ages, mercenaries were part of armies. Machiavelli’s The Prince (1513) discusses mercenaries –  Chapter XII: How Many Kinds of Soldiery There are, and Concerning Mercenaries.

The fact, during the Middle Ages mercenaries were called condottieri or “contractors,” and they formed multinational companies, termed “free companies,” just like Blackwater and Aegis today. There was a backlash against war, and states began to cooperate to outlaw mercenaries. This effort came to an end with the rise of Communism and the Cold War. This is when the United States began to invest billions into the private military industry. General Eisenhower warned us when it was his last day in office.

The US has turned to private mercenaries to some extent because an All-Volunteer Force could not recruit enough Americans to maintain wars. In 2002, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the Iraq War would last: “Five days or five weeks or five months, but it certainly isn’t going to last any longer than that.” Sound familiar? Adam Kinzinger claims we could defeat Russia in three days. For publicity’s sake, when the Iraq War was not over in five weeks or even five months, the risk of a Vietnam-like draft to fill the ranks, or they would contract out for mercenaries. In Iraq, 50% of the US force was mercenaries. In Afghanistan, mercenaries reached 70%. In WW2, mercenaries accounted for only 10%.

Part of this migration crisis is their hope to fill the military ranks, offering them citizenship. Today’s mercenaries are from all over the world: Mexico, Ghana, Australia, Canada, and Africa. Private military companies are just like any other multinational corporation: they recruit globally.

More mercenaries were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan than soldiers. The actual number of contractors killed is probably higher than we know since the US government doesn’t collect such data, and the companies generally do not report that figure since it would clearly be bad for recruiting. We now see private military operations in Russia and other countries in Europe. This has become a multi-billion-dollar industry. Even the United Arab Emirates hired mercenaries to fight in Yemen. Nigeria has also turned to hiring mercenaries.

The side-effect is that by turning to mercenaries; history shows they have also turned on the hand that fed them. The Neocons can use mercenaries and send them to invade without Congressional Acts of War since they are no officially American troops. This dangerously creates a strategic dependency on the private sector to sustain war, and those in power then have “plausible deniability” since Americans are not coming home in body bags.

It is also NOT a war crime if a mercenary rather than a government carries it out.  Contractors don’t count as “boots on the ground” sending in their mercenaries. This actually undermines all accountability of the armed forces. Congress typically has no idea of who’s being contracted. They do not see the details.

The Neocons love mercenaries, for they do not need a Declaration of War from Congress and can order an invasion of Russia, as they have just done, with no accountability. They can start and expand wars for profit and personal vengeance. Out of work, mercenaries are so accustomed to violence that they are not easily re-emerged into a society where law and conduct are accountable. There’s a lot of historical evidence for this from the European Middle Ages when mercenaries were routinely used, and when unemployed, they did not return nicely to society.

With the Neocons turning to mercenaries, they can wage war without approval from Congress or oversight from anyone. Private military companies must generally self-report crimes, which they won’t. Mercenaries are a symptom of something far more serious as we move into 2032. Mercenaries have completely changed war and threatened world order. Mercenaries are becoming more common, and this presents a serious problem looking ahead.