COMBAT FOR SALE: THE NEW, POST-COLD WAR MERCENARIES.

AuthorISENBERG, DAVID

Private military companies are working hand in glove with various governments to fight their wars in a businesslike manner.

THEY'RE BACK! The new and improved mercenaries are now the good guys--at least to some. No doubt Niccolo Machiavelli, the Italian political philosopher, must be turning over in his grave. After all, in his classic work of realpolitik, The Prince, he wrote: "Mercenaries and auxiliaries are useless and dangerous; and if one holds his state based on these arms, he will stand neither firm nor safe; for they are disunited, ambitious and without discipline."

Mercenaries are widely perceived to be war profiteers exploiting violence for personal gain. Such unflattering references are why they have worked hard to reposition themselves. In the new grammar, mercenaries use innocuous business titles, such as private military companies (PMCs).

PMCs are unlike the mercenaries of a few decades ago, such as Frenchman Bob Denard and Irishman "Mad" Mike Hoare, who took advantage of the crises that followed decolonization in Africa. Nor are they like the Bay of Pigs and Vietnam veterans who participated in the 1980s Central American wars. Today's mercenaries increasingly are highly trained, organized, and, most important, hierarchically formed into incorporated, registered businesses whose services are offered to governments, large corporations, and nongovernmental organizations. Often, the personnel of PMCs are former military members with many years of active duty behind them.

Of course, traditional mercenaries still exist and fight. Looking at press clippings, one can find frequent references to them in such places as Kashmir, Afghanistan, and various African nations. In 1998, French mercenaries working in Congo Brazzaville went on strike for lack of pay. Employees of some PMCs have been reported to be working on both sides in the Congo war as well as for the West African multinational peacekeeping force (ECOMOG) in the fighting in Sierra Leone.

Modern mercenaries have assumed a new media visibility. The activities of the South African-based Executive Outcomes (EO), which helped the Angolan military bring Jonas Savimbi's National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) to the bargaining table; U.S.-based MPRI, which has won contracts to train the Croatian and Bosnian militaries; and Sandline, which has been in the news due to its involvement in Papua New Guinea and Sierra Leone, have been well-publicized, due in no small part to their web sites, professionally produced videos, and marketing literature.

Why are PMCs more visible in recent years? The end of the bipolar superpower standoff pushed an international order, which had been in an unnatural stasis for the past half-century, into an unsettled flux. Unlike in the Cold War era, there is a marked reluctance on the part of the West to intervene in what are seen to be peripheral conflicts not related to vital national interests. The casual ties suffered by U.S. forces in Somalia in 1993 strengthened American reluctance to participate in peace enforcement missions.

Since the end of the Cold War, capitalism and privatization have been making major inroads worldwide. Corporations and businesses are undertaking new investments on a global scale, trying to break into new markets and obtain new resources, as well as to protect existing infrastructure in areas often troubled by violence,

Given that the military and security forces of a country are often, at best, inadequate to the challenges besetting them, a government's natural desire to stay in power, and the lack of support from outside powers, it comes as no surprise that national and corporate leaders are choosing help from whatever quarter is available. In that sense, regimes turn to PMCs because they cannot trust their own forces or those forces are in disarray. That help is increasingly available from PMCs is not surprising. After all, for several years, in country after country, the mantra has been to let the private sector do it. Downsizing and outsourcing have been all the rage, affecting even military forces. When it comes to weak or unstable governments, nature abhors a vacuum.

The growth of security companies internationally is in many respects an extension of their increasing role in providing security in domestic settings. There is still enough conflict in the world for people to want PMC services. In 1997, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Africa experienced its highest number of bloody conflicts in several years. There were eight, four of them new, making it the continent's most violent year since 1991, when there were 10. All of these are internal conflicts, which are usually the most intractable and the ones that outside powers are most reluctant to become involved in. They are also the least likely to be solved through negotiation. Thus, given the need to improve military capabilities in order to settle things decisively on the battlefield and the prospect of no help from outside states, such wars represent market opportunities to PMCs.

Not all PMCs are the same. Some very large U.S. firms--such as Vinnell Corp., which for many years has been training the Saudi Arabian National Guard; BDM International Inc., Brown & Root; and Pacific Architects and Engineering--have long provided logistical support to foreign militaries. These companies offer some military-training capabilities most often associated with PMCs. However, they are primarily concerned with furnishing security services and do not provide direct military assistance that has a strategic impact.

It is the prospect of private finns conducting direct combat, combat support, or training people in combat--as opposed to maintenance--skills which seizes public attention. In a 1998 International Institute of Strategic Studies paper, David Shearer wrote: "Military companies provide active military assistance, in some cases involving combat, which has a strategic impact on the political and security environments of the countries in which they operate." In other words, they are not merely passive trainers. They may fight alongside a client's military forces, but usually with the limitation that they are acting within the chain of command of the client's military hierarchy.

EO was virtually in a class by itself, as it primarily was a pool of former South African National Defense Force or police personnel--albeit one without a weapons stockpile or even a standing force. It was also the one PMC that conducted direct combat operations on a sustained basis. Most PMCs, unlike EO, function in a noncombat advisory capacity...

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