The Modern Mercenary: Private Armies and What They Mean for World Order (2 page)

I am indebted to the counsel of Christopher Coker at the London School of Economics, whose lucid work on the nature of war and society informed this book from its inception. I am grateful to Christopher Kinsey and his scholarship on the private security industry, which has influenced my thinking on the subject. Equally, I am thankful for the guidance of Gregory Mills, whose indefatigable work in fragile states as strategic adviser, scholar, journalist and occasional race car driver are an inspiration. I am also grateful for the indispensable assistance of Dave McBride at Oxford University Press, the help of Peter H. McGuigan and his team at Foundry Literary+Media, the thoughtful edits of Brian Slattery, and the support of Nadia Schadlow. Finally, I am thankful to my friends and colleagues at the National Defense University, the RAND Corporation, and the New America Foundation who provided me with invaluable feedback and friendship.

Washington, D.C., July 2013

I’ll get paid for killing, and this town is full of men who deserve to die.

—Sanjuro, masterless samurai

The 1961 Japanese movie
Yojimbo
, directed by Akira Kurosawa, tells the story of Sanjuro, a masterless samurai, or
ronin
, who arrives at a small town that has been torn asunder by two competing criminal gangs. The
ronin
persuades each crime lord to hire him as protection from the other, and through skillful political manipulation and the bloody use of his sword, he successfully pits the rival gangs against each other. The gangs soon annihilate each other in battle, while the
ronin
enriches himself; he then moves on to the next crime-ridden town. By acting in his economic self-interest, the
ronin
brings peace to the town, albeit with much collateral damage.

Yojimbo
may serve as an apt analogy for where today’s private military industry is heading. Private military organizations—from ancient mercenaries to modern private military companies (PMCs) such as Blackwater USA—are expeditionary conflict entrepreneurs that kill or train others to kill. It is certainly conceivable that a PMC today could secretly and simultaneously serve two clients at war with each other, as did the
ronin
in
Yojimbo
, expanding the conflict for profit until both sides destroy each other, after which the company would move on to the next conflict and business opportunity.

More nuanced scenarios also abound. A human rights organization such as Amnesty International could hire a PMC such as Blackwater, currently rebranded as “Academi,” to stage a humanitarian intervention in a place like Darfur to save lives and curb the ongoing genocide, which has claimed more than three hundred thousand lives. This, in turn, could prompt the Sudanese government to hire an opposing PMC sourced from countries such as Russia or China, which have troubled human rights records, to counter Blackwater and help Sudan “pacify” Darfur. If PMCs are truly profit-maximizing entities, like the
ronin
in
Yojimbo
, it is likely that these two PMCs would cut deals between
themselves, either explicitly or implicitly, to promote their parochial business interests, namely, spreading and elongating war for the sake of profit.

The result would be two or more PMCs fighting an artificially prolonged proxy war in Africa for state and nonstate actors, with far-reaching implications for international relations. Combining profit motive with war will introduce a new kind of warfare—contract warfare—that will likely increase armed conflict worldwide.

The above scenario may sound like a movie script, but it is not. In 2008, I was asked to participate in such a plan. Millionaire actress Mia Farrow had approached Blackwater and a few human rights organizations to end the genocide in Darfur. The plan was simple. Blackwater would stage an armed intervention in Darfur and establish so-called islands of humanity, refugee camps protected by PMC firepower for civilians fleeing the deadly
janjaweed
, gunmen who massacred whole villages in Darfur. During this time, the human rights organizations would mount a global name-and-shame media campaign to goad the international community into ending the genocide once and for all with a muscular UN peacekeeping mission.

One of the human rights organizations approached me with this plan, given my background as a veteran of the private military industry who operated in Africa. The group wanted to know two things: Could Blackwater actually stage an armed intervention in Darfur? And if it could, was this desirable?

The answer to the first question was certain: Blackwater could feasibly stage a humanitarian intervention. In 2005, it had launched a subsidiary company called Greystone, which could rapidly deploy a military force anywhere in the world to create a more secure environment for its customers. In the words of the company, “Greystone is an international security services company that offers your country or organization a complete solution to your most pressing security needs.… Customer satisfaction is our primary focus, and we deliver superior services with professionalism and flexibility.” The company website lists humanitarian peacekeeping as a primary service that “provides a light infantry solution that is self-contained and self-sufficient. The Greystone peacekeeping program leverages efficiency of private resources to provide a complete cost effective security solution.”
¹
Being familiar with western Sudan and Greystone’s actual capabilities, I believed Greystone could stage a humanitarian intervention in Darfur for days and perhaps even weeks.

We also discussed other options for Greystone. One was the possibility of training and equipping Darfurians or African Union peacekeepers to better
defend against Sudanese aggression. Another was using unarmed aerial drones to provide early warning to Darfur villages of impending attacks and also to document human rights atrocities for CNN and other global media outlets. Last was direct action: offensive combat operations such as commando raids or armed aerial drone strikes conducted by Blackwater personnel to scatter the
janjaweed
and disrupt the Sudanese military’s ability to conduct the genocide.

The answer to the second question was less certain. Even though Blackwater could intervene in Darfur, there were doubts about whether it should. The action would brazenly violate international law, although some argued that it was justified by the international community’s failure to enforce human rights laws and stop the genocide. There were other concerns, too. The intervention could undermine ongoing diplomatic efforts to resolve the conflict peacefully, even if those efforts were paltry, and might even drag the United States into a war with Sudan, since Blackwater and other principal actors were Americans. Owing to this, Blackwater fretted that its actions would anger its best client, the United States, which would be bad for business. Also, the Blackwater employees conducting the operation could be tried by the International Criminal Court at The Hague for war crimes in their effort to stop a genocide, which Blackwater and the human rights groups both found bitterly ironic. The human rights groups worried that it might trigger additional violence and reprisals in the region, worsening the situation for local Darfurians in the long run.

Finally, such an action would set a precedent that many would not welcome: the possibility of international vigilantism, which could undermine the world order. Today global governance and the use of military action are the exclusive purview of nation-states and the United Nations, which is made up of states. Only states are allowed to wage war, and corporations, human rights groups, rich people, and all other nonstate actors are forbidden to use military force to achieve their objectives. A humanitarian intervention organized and conducted by nonstate actors would blatantly challenge this norm and set a dangerous precedent.

However, this is exactly what the human rights groups were hoping to do, namely, to provoke the international community into action. If the United Nations condemned Blackwater, it would, in effect, be abetting genocide, yet if it did not stop the company, it would be encouraging mercenarism. The only solution would be for the United Nations to condemn Blackwater and intervene in Darfur to finish what the PMC had started, or so the planners of this plot hoped.

Ultimately, all parties decided not to pursue a private military intervention. They believed the risks outweighed the benefits. However, it is possible—even probable—that in the future, individuals and organizations will overcome such reservations and retain more aggressive PMCs to do their bidding. A tycoon seeking an altruistic legacy might hire a PMC from, say, Chechnya or El Salvador, both of which have a surplus of unemployed skilled fighters and a
deficit of respect for the laws of war, to stage a similar operation for the purposes of posterity. If successful, this could encourage similar undertakings that would foster a free market for force, where PMCs and clients seek each other out, negotiate prices, and wage wars for personal gain—in other words, contract warfare.

Such a market for force is closer than many might suppose. Currently, the market is not truly free; it is a monopsony, where there is a predominant buyer—the United States—and many sellers. This is a result of the United States’ insatiable need for security in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. As the consumer-in-chief, the United States wields market power to shape private military business practices and norms. For example, major PMCs today will not work for countries such as Sudan that are at odds with the United States. But this may change after the Iraq and Afghanistan bubbles burst and PMCs seek new buyers and proffer more forceful services to survive.

This new market for force will likely develop into a free one, unless the United States or a similar “superclient” has need of every PMC available, which is unlikely. Also, if trends of the past are indicators of the future, then the new market will be lightly regulated, and efforts by countries to change that will simply drive PMCs offshore or underground. Current domestic laws are inadequate, international law is ambiguous and difficult to enforce, and ultimately, a new Geneva Protocol is needed to regulate the private military industry. However, such efforts usually evolve over decades.

What would a free market for force look like? The supply and demand for security in an insecure world would logically seek each other out. Supply would expand as PMCs emerged from Russia, China, and elsewhere, offering greater combat-oriented possibilities and willing to work for the highest bidder, with scant regard for human rights or international law, in order to win new clients in a crowded marketplace.

Furthermore, the staff that make up the larger PMCs is drawn from all over the world. Companies such as G4S, Triple Canopy, and DynCorp International may have British or American headquarters but recruit much of their personnel from places such as the Philippines, Colombia, South Africa, and so forth. These individuals have learned the trade, and some will likely return to their countries of origin and form their own, smaller PMCs, willing to work for whoever pays them.

Other small firms already exist, empowered as subcontractors to bigger PMCs in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. As the United States withdraws from these conflict zones and its large security contracts conclude, these small firms
will spin off and seek new clients in the international marketplace as full-fledged PMCs. New firms have already sprung up in places like Afghanistan and Somalia, as this book will show, offering more combat-offense capabilities and taking risks that current industry leaders would never contemplate.

Supply can create demand in the context of security, and this will also diversify the marketplace. New capabilities provided by emerging firms will attract new clients beyond the United States: fragile states and tyrannical regimes augmenting their forces, UN missions requiring more peacekeepers, multinational corporations and shipping lines protecting their assets, humanitarian workers needing protection, opposition groups seeking regime change, and the whims of superempowered individuals. The near contract to intervene in Darfur may be the first of its kind but is probably not the last. Worse, unscrupulous PMCs can create demand through extortion, demanding “protection money” from anyone they can threaten and who can pay.

The future marketplace will be global hot spots and conflict zones such as the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa, because demand for security is high there. It is natural that supply should pursue demand and vice versa, yet introducing an industry vested in conflict into the most conflict-prone places on earth is vexing, given the possible consequences for the people who live there. Few would like to see an unbridled market for force emerge in the decades ahead. Yet such a world may already be upon us.

Since the end of the Cold War, PMCs have proliferated at an alarming rate. Surprisingly, the primary consumers of this new service are not weak regimes in the developing world looking to consolidate their grasp on power, although this has happened, but strong states like the United States of America in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. This is curious, because the United States is the greatest military power on earth and should not need hired guns. This book examines why this has occurred and what it means for the future of international affairs. It finds that private military force, a timeless phenomenon, is back after a four-hundred-year hiatus and is not likely to go away.

Even more disquieting, the reappearance of private military actors heralds a wider trend in international relations: the emergence of neomedievalism. In the modern world order, only states are sovereign, and only they can partake in international politics, make international laws, and legitimately wage war. But it was not always so. For example, during the Middle Ages in Europe, sovereignty was fragmented among different political actors—emperor, church, king, bishop, princes, city-states, chivalric orders, and so forth. Each vied for power, waged
war (often through mercenaries), and made overlapping claims of authority over people, places, and things. Back then, rulers rarely retained absolute authority within a large territory, as a state does today.

This began to change over the centuries, as states eventually became the dominant actors on the world stage, crowding out nonstate actors. This conquest was, in part, guaranteed by their monopoly on the use of force, such as national police and military forces; those who did not comply with a state’s orders were thrown in jail or worse. Armed nonstate actors, like mercenaries, were strictly outlawed because they could physically challenge the state—even defeat it. Hence private force was deemed a threat to states and the modern world order, which is based on states. This order is sometimes called the Westphalian system, named for the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, which ended the Thirty Years War and gave birth to the modern state system.