Mercenaries and War:

Understanding Private
Armies Today
Sean McFate
Mercenaries and War
Sean McFate
Mercenaries and War:
Understanding Private
Armies Today
Sean McFate

National Defense University Press

Washington, D.C.
December 2019
 Opinions, conclusions, and recommendations expressed or implied within
are solely those of the contributors and do not necessarily represent the views of
the Defense Department or any other agency of the Federal Government. Cleared
for public release; distribution unlimited.

Portions of this work may be quoted or reprinted without permission, pro-

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a courtesy copy of reprints or reviews.

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First printing, December 2019

Contents

An Emerging Threat.................................................................................2

Who Is a “Mercenary”?............................................................................6

Stigma and Hypocrisy..............................................................................8

The Second Oldest Profession...............................................................10

Private Force, Power, and World Order...............................................13

The Return of Mercenaries....................................................................16

The U.S. Role in Resurrecting Mercenarism.......................................18

Market Globalization.............................................................................23

A Glimpse Inside the Mercenary World.............................................26

Understanding Private Warfare............................................................35

Strategies for Private Wars.....................................................................38

An Unstoppable Trend ..........................................................................41

Acknowledgments..................................................................................44

Notes........................................................................................................45

About the Author...................................................................................51

 Mercenaries and War

2030 hours, February 7, 2018.

The opening salvo of artillery was so intense that American troops took cover
in foxholes for protection. After the barrage, a column of Russian tanks advanced on
their positions, firing their 125-millimeter turret guns at soldiers. They returned fire,
but it was not enough to repulse the tanks. They were in danger of being overrun.
A team of about 30 special operations forces was pinned down at a Conoco
gas plant. Roughly 20 miles away, a team of Green Berets and a platoon of Marines
stared at their computer screens, watching the drone feeds of the battle. Their collec-
tive mission was to defend the Conoco facility, alongside Kurdish and Arab forces. No
one expected an enemy armored assault.
Attacking them were 500 mercenaries, hired by Russia, who possessed artillery,
armored personnel carriers, and T-72 main battle tanks. These were not the cartoon-
ish rabble depicted by Hollywood and Western pundits. This was the Wagner Group,
a private military company based in Russia, and like many high-end mercenaries
today, they were covert and lethal.
The American commandos radioed for help. Warplanes arrived in waves, in-
cluding Reaper drones, F-22 stealth fighter jets, F-15E Strike Fighters, B-52 bombers,
AC-130 gunships, and AH-64 Apache helicopters. Scores of strikes pummeled the
mercenaries, but they did not waver.1
Four hours later, the mercenaries finally retreated. Four hours. No Americans
were killed, and the Department of Defense (DOD) touted this as a big win. But it
wasn’t. It took America’s most elite troops and advanced aircraft 4 hours to repel 500
mercenaries. What happens when they have to face 1,000? 5,000? More?

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Mercenaries are more powerful than experts realize, a grave oversight. Those
who assume they are cheap imitations of national armed forces invite disaster be-
cause for-profit warriors are a wholly different genus and species of fighter. Private
military companies such as the Wagner Group are more like heavily armed multi-
national corporations 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 may backfire.

An Emerging Threat
When people think of private military contractors, they imagine Blackwater
Security Consulting in Iraq circa 2007. However, the market for force has moved
on. Firms like Blackwater are quaint compared to the Wagner Group and other
contemporary mercenaries. Curiously, this trend is overlooked by scholars, the
mainstream media, and the Intelligence Community.2 Consequently, there is a
dangerous lacuna of understanding concerning this emerging threat.
Private force has become big business, and global in scope. No one truly
knows how many billions of dollars slosh around this illicit market. All we know is
that business is booming. Recent years have seen major mercenary activity in Ye-
men, Nigeria, Ukraine, Syria, and Iraq. Many of these for-profit warriors outclass
local militaries, and a few can even stand up to America’s most elite forces, as the
battle in Syria shows.
The Middle East is awash in mercenaries. Kurdistan is a haven for soldiers
of fortune looking for work with the Kurdish militia, oil companies defending
their oil fields, or those who want terrorists dead. Some are just adventure seek-
ers, while others are American veterans who found civilian life meaningless. The
capital of Kurdistan, Irbil, has become an unofficial marketplace of mercenary ser-
vices, reminiscent of the Tatooine bar in the movie Star Wars—full of smugglers
and guns for hire.
The United Arab Emirates secretly dispatched hundreds of special forces mer-
cenaries to fight the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen. Hailing from Latin Ameri-
can countries like Colombia, Panama, El Salvador, and Chile, they were all tough

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veterans of the drug wars, bringing new tactics and toughness to Middle East con-
flicts. They were a bargain, too, costing a fraction of what an American or British
mercenary would charge, so the Emirates hired 1,800 of them, paying two to four
times their old salaries. Allegedly, African mercenaries are also fighting in Yemen
for Saudi Arabia and come from countries like Sudan, Chad, and Eritrea. Private
force has proved a useful option for wealthy Arab nations, particularly Saudi Ara-
bia, Qatar, and the Emirates, that want to wage war but do not have an aggressive
military. Their mercenaries have fought in Yemen, Syria, and Libya in recent years.
Turning profit motive into a war strategy, Syria rewards mercenaries who
seize territory from terrorists with oil and mining rights. At least two Russian
companies have received contracts under this policy: Evro Polis and Stroytrans-
gaz. These oil and mining firms then hired mercenaries to do the dirty work. For
example, Evro Polis employed the Wagner Group to capture oil fields from the
so-called Islamic State (IS) in central Syria, which it did. Reports show there are
about 2,500 Russia-bought mercenaries in Syria. Russia also uses them in Ukraine,
and the Ukrainians fight back with their own mercenaries. The war there is awash
in Russian, Chechen, French, Spanish, Swedish, and Serbian mercenaries, fighting
for both sides in eastern Ukraine’s bloody conflict.
Mercenaries were ubiquitous in the Ukraine conflict. Companies like the
Wagner Group conducted a wide range of secret missions, all denied by the Rus-
sian government. Ukrainian oligarchs hired mercenaries, too, but not for the
country’s sake. Billionaire Igor Kolomoisky employed private warriors to capture
the headquarters of oil company UkrTransNafta in order to protect his financial
assets.
Nigeria secretly hired mercenaries to solve a big problem: Boko Haram. This
Islamic terrorist group fights to carve out a caliphate in Nigeria, and the Nige-
rian army fights back, its methods no better. There is a saying in Africa: When
elephants fight, the grass gets trampled. Tens of thousands of people were killed,
and 2.3 million more were displaced from their homes. Boko Haram abducted
276 schoolgirls for “wives,” many of whom were never seen again. International
outrage was swift but impotent.

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 McFate

That’s when the Nigerian government secretly turned to mercenaries to fight

Boko Haram. These were not the lone gunmen of B-grade movies, but a real
private army. They arrived with special forces teams and Mi-24 Hind helicopter
gunships—flying tanks. Conducting search and destroy missions, they drove out
Boko Haram in a few weeks. The Nigerian military could not achieve this task in
6 years. Some wonder if we should hire mercenaries to hunt and kill terrorists in
the Middle East, given the slow progress of national armies and United Nations
(UN) absenteeism.
Even terrorists hire mercenaries. Malhama Tactical is based in Uzbekistan,
and they only work for jihadi extremists. Malhama’s hired guns are all Sunni, but
not all are not ideological like their clients. Their services are standard for today’s
market, functioning as military trainers, arms dealers, or elite warriors. Most of
their work is in Syria for Nusra Front, an al Qaeda–affiliated terrorist group, and
the Turkistan Islamic Party, the Syrian branch of a Uighur extremist group based
in China. In the future, jihadis may hire mercenary special forces for precision
terrorist attacks.
If terrorists can hire mercenaries, why not humanitarians? Nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs) such as CARE, Save the Children, CARITAS, and World
Vision are increasingly turning to the private sector to protect their people, prop-
erty, and interests in conflict zones. Large military companies like Aegis Defense
Services and Triple Canopy advertise their services to NGOs, and NGO trade as-
sociations like the European Interagency Security Forum and InterAction provide
members with guidelines for hiring them. Some think the UN should augment
its thinning peacekeeping missions with certified private military companies.3
The option of private peacekeepers versus none at all, which is the condition in
many parts of the world today, is a Hobson’s choice. What’s to stop a millionaire
from buying a humanitarian intervention in the future? Stopping atrocities would
leave quite the legacy. Actress Mia Farrow considered hiring Blackwater to end the
genocide in Darfur in 2008.4
Multinational corporations are the biggest new clients of mercenaries, espe-
cially the extractive industries. Companies working in dangerous places are tired of
relying on corrupt or inept security forces provided to them by host governments,

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and they are turning to private force. For example, mining giant Freeport-McMo-
Ran employed Triple Canopy to protect its vast mine in Papua, Indonesia, where
there is an insurgency. The China National Petroleum Corporation contracts DeWe
Security to safeguard its assets in the middle of South Sudan’s civil war. Someday
ExxonMobil or Google may hire an army, too.
There are mercenaries on the sea as well, similar to privateers 2 centuries ago.
International shipping lines hire them to protect their ships traveling through pi-
rate waters in the Gulf of Aden, Strait of Malacca, and Gulf of Guinea. Here’s how
it works. Armed contractors sit on “arsenal ships” in pirate waters and chopper
to a client freighter or tanker when called. Once aboard, they act as “embarked
security,” hardening the ship with razor wire and protecting it with high-caliber
firepower. After the ship passes through pirate waters, the team returns to its arse-
nal ship and awaits the next client. The industry is based in London, and seeks le-
gitimacy through ISO 28007 certification.5 Some would like to see true privateers:
private naval vessels that could hunt and kill pirates. Americans will be pleased
to know that Congress is authorized to hire privateers under Article 1, Section 8,
of the U.S. Constitution, and this could prove more efficient than sending Arleigh
Burke–class destroyers after pirate zodiacs.
There are even mercenaries in cyberspace, called hack back companies. These
computer companies attack hackers, or “hack back” those who assail their client’s
networks. Hack back companies cannot undo the damage of a network breach, but
that is not the point. They serve as a deterrent. If hackers are choosing targets, and
they know that one company has a hack-back company behind it and the other
does not, they select the softer target. Also known as active defense, this practice
is currently illegal in many countries, including the United States, but some are
questioning this edict since the National Security Agency offers scant protection
for nongovernmental entities. For example, the WannaCry ransomware attack in
May 2017 infected more than 230,000 computers in over 150 countries. Victims
included the United Kingdom’s National Health Service, Spain’s Telefónica, Ger-
many’s Deutsche Bahn, and U.S. companies like Federal Express. If countries can-
not protect their people and organizations from cyber attack, then why not allow
them to protect themselves?

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 McFate

Private force is manifesting everywhere. After 150 years underground, the

market for force is returning in just a few decades and is growing at an alarming
rate. In military strategy, there are five domains of war: land, sea, air, space, and cy-
ber. In less than 20 years, private force has proliferated among every domain except
space, but that too may change. Space is already privatized with companies like
SpaceX, and it is possible that private armed satellites may one day orbit the Earth.
Worse things are to come. In just 10 years, the market for force has moved
beyond Blackwater in Iraq and become more lethal. Mercenaries are appearing
everywhere, and no longer just in the fringe. Contract warfare has become a new
way of warfare, resurrected by the United States and imitated by others.
The rise of mercenaries is producing a new kind of threat—private war—that
threatens chaos. It is literally the marketization of war, where military force is
bought and sold like any other commodity. It is an ancient form of armed conflict
that modern militaries have forgotten how to fight. Should this trend develop, the
super-rich could become superpowers, leading to wars without states. In such a
world, states would be mere prizes to be won rather than agents of their own des-
tiny. This has the potential to upend international relations as we know it.

Who Is a “Mercenary”?
There is no expert consensus on who exactly is a “mercenary.” Those in the
industry, their clients, and some outside experts spurn the “M” word owing to
the associated stigma, and give these private-sector fighters new labels: private
military contractors, private security companies, private military companies, pri-
vate security/military companies, private military firms, military service provid-
ers, operational contractors, and contingency contractors. Since the emergence of
this new warrior class in the 1990s, volumes of academic ink have been spilt on
differentiating them from mercenaries.
However, such labels are little more than euphemism. Expert definitions fail
to endure because they defy the obvious: If you have the skillsets to be a “private
military contractor,” then you can work as a “mercenary,” too. There is no shin-
ing line between these categories, and it all depends on the individual warrior’s
will and market circumstances. Academic typologies overcomplicate an already

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complex problem, helping no one. Accordingly, this analysis will use these myriad
labels interchangeably with “mercenary.”
In simplest terms, a mercenary is an armed civilian paid to do military opera-
tions in a foreign conflict zone. For example, civilians conducting direct actions
or training troops in foreign conflict zones are mercenaries because they are per-
forming uniquely military functions. Federal Express, a courier company, deliver-
ing a parcel to Kabul during the Afghanistan War is not a mercenary firm because
logistical supply is not an exclusively military task. Only privatized military tasks
earn the label “mercenary.”
There are five characteristics that distinguish mercenaries from soldiers and
armed nonstate actors, such as terrorists. First, they are motivated more by profit
than politics. This is not to suggest that all mercenaries disregard political interests
and serve merely at the whim of the highest bidder, but they are fundamentally
profit-maximizing entities. Second, they are structured as businesses, and some of
the large private military corporations have even been traded on Wall Street and
the London Stock Exchange, such as DynCorp International and Armor Group.
Third, they are expeditionary in nature, meaning they seek work in foreign lands
rather than provide domestic security services. There are exceptions to this, espe-
cially when it comes to homeland defense, but in general, mercenaries are foreign-
focused and are not domestic security guards. Fourth, they typically deploy force
in a military manner, as opposed to a law-enforcement one. The purpose of mili-
tary force is to violently defeat or deter the enemy, while law enforcement seeks to
de-escalate violent situations to maintain law and order. This intrinsically affects
how they operate. Fifth and most important, mercenaries are lethal and represent
the commodification of armed conflict. Soldiers and politically motivated armed
nonstate actors do not seek to marketize war and monetarily profit by it. There will
always be exceptions to these five features, but they serve as a good test of whether
an armed actor is a mercenary or not.
A person, company, or state that hires a mercenary does not change its status.
For example, some experts have argued that mercenaries employed by legitimate
states make mercenaries legitimate, too.6 This was a common claim during the Iraq
and Afghanistan wars, when the United States hired thousands of armed civilians

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to supplement troop levels. However, this is flawed thinking and the consequence
of selection bias. By this same logic, the Russian company Wagner Group would be
considered legitimate, yet few Western observers would probably agree. Clientele
do not change the nature of mercenary force.

Stigma and Hypocrisy

We are taught to hate mercenaries as sinners and love soldiers as saints, but
such stereotypes are ignorant. There is plenty of evidence showing both have done
noble and abhorrent things throughout history. For example, during the Iraq War
a squad of Blackwater mercenaries killed 17 civilians at Nisour Square, a traffic
intersection in Bagdad. It sparked an international uproar, multiple high-level in-
vestigations, and was a strategic setback for U.S. efforts in that country. For Ameri-
cans, Nisour Square was a stain on their country’s moral character, and a low point
of the war. For Iraqis, Blackwater combatants look like U.S. Soldiers, a challenge
for American commanders in the field.
The Nisour Square shooting is often cited as one of the Iraq War’s worst war
crimes, but who remembers the Haditha massacre? In 2005, a squad of U.S. Ma-
rines murdered 24 unarmed civilians in a revenge killing spree after one of their
comrades were killed and two were injured. The incident had overtones of the My
Lai massacre during the Vietnam War. The victims ranged from age 3 to 76. Many
were shot multiple times at close range while unarmed, some still in their pajamas
and in their bedrooms. One was in a wheelchair and four were children.
For some reason, Haditha was overlooked as an acceptable war tragedy. The
only investigation found nothing wrong, and blamed “an unscrupulous enemy”
for everything. The report stated the incident was a “case study” that illustrates
“how simple failures can lead to disastrous results.”7 After massacring 24 civilians,
which is more than the Nisour Square shooting, the military quietly dropped all
charges against the Marines except for the squad leader, Staff Sergeant Frank D.
Wuterich, who was acquitted in a court martial. The world took no notice because
it saw nothing wrong.
Both Nisour and Haditha were comparable crimes, but the reaction could not
have been more different: Mercenaries are butchers while Soldiers (or Marines)

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make innocent mistakes. This is an irrational prejudice. Murder is murder, no

matter what kind of warfighter pulls the trigger. Experts justify this bias by citing
Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527), a senior official in the Florentine Republic and
author of The Prince. He despised mercenaries as “disunited, ambitious, without
discipline, unfaithful; gallant among friends, vile among enemies; no fear of God,
no faith with men.”8 This judgment has ossified into orthodoxy.
Most think Machiavelli’s assessment of private force definitive, but it should
not be. He hated mercenaries because they cheated him, owing to his own in-
competence. From 1498 to 1506, he helped organized Florence’s defences and suf-
fered serial humiliations at the hands of the city’s own mercenaries during the war
against Pisa, a weaker adversary. In 1505, for example, 10 mercenary captains de-
fected to the other side, a major embarrassment and strategic blow. The market for
force is a “buyer beware” emporium, and those who do not know how to handle
mercenaries, like Machiavelli, should not rent them.
No longer trusting mercenaries, Machiavelli convinced the Florentine au-
thorities to raise a militia instead, composed of citizen-soldiers whose loyalty to
the republic would remain unflappable. But loyalty is a poor substitute for skill.
These farmers-turned-soldiers were no match for professional troops, and the
Florentines were soon crushed in 1512 by professionals. This military disaster re-
sulted in the capitulation of the Florentine Republic, henceforward under papal
control, and questions Machiavelli’s claims about the superiority of militias over
mercenaries.9 The French regarded the flush Florentines as the epitome of military
incompetence. Cheekily, Machiavelli wrote The Prince to impress the conquerors
of Florence and win back his old job. They must have laughed.
Machiavelli’s ideas on militias and mercenaries were spurned for centuries be-
cause they were maladroit. Mercenaries remained the main instrument of war for
the next 200 years, and no one dare rely on feeble militias. Despite Machiavelli’s
protestations and those of other early Renaissance humanists, the mercenary pro-
fession was considered a legitimate trade. Often the lesser sons of nobility, such as
Duke Werner of Urslingen, Count Konrad von Landau, and Giovanni de’ Medici,
sought careers as mercenary captains. There was no stigma attached to hiring a pri-
vate army; it was considered no different than employing an engineering company

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to repair one’s moat or commissioning an artist to paint portraits of one’s family. The
commodification of conflict resulted in a thriving market for force, as the services of
private armies or “free companies,” as they were known, went to the highest or most
powerful bidder. Contract warfare was common, and mercenaries were how wars
were waged.
Machiavelli also ignored inconvenient facts in his analysis, like the loyalty of
mercenaries. Sir John Hawkwood was one of the greatest mercenary captains of
the age. Hailing from England and a veteran of the Hundred Years’ War, he was
monogamous to Florence for over two decades, until his death in 1394. The city
honored his faithful service with a funerary monument in Florence’s famed cathe-
dral. Meanwhile, Machiavelli faded into obscurity. He is lionized today, thanks to
20th-century scholarship, but his views on mercenaries are spurious.
People view soldiers like wives and mercenaries as prostitutes, who turn love
into a transaction. But every soldier has a little mercenary in him, and vice versa.
Troops often reenlist for big bonuses, a transactional practice common in most
militaries. For example, the U.S. Army sometimes offers up to $90,000 for Soldiers
to reenlist, enough to make modern mercenaries salivate. The author has also seen
mercenaries refuse jobs on political grounds. Some American-hired guns will nev-
er take money from Russia, China, Iran, or a terrorist group; America’s enemies
are their enemies. The line between soldier and mercenary is fuzzy.

The Second Oldest Profession

The taboo against mercenaries is a recent invention, only a few hundred years
old. Mercenaries were long considered an honorable, albeit bloody trade, and only
the past 200 years stigmatized them. As for the previous 4,000+ years, mercenaries
were a feature—often the main feature—of war. The word mercenary comes from
the Latin merces (wages or pay) and is no different than the solde or pay due to
fighters, from which the word “soldier” is derived. For much of the past, mercenar-
ies and soldiers were synonymous.
Most of military history is privatized, and mercenaries are as old as war it-
self. The reason is simple: Renting force is cheaper than owning it. Maintaining a
permanent military seems normal today, but it is not. Paying for one’s own armed

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forces is ruinously expensive, similar to owning a private jet versus buying a plane
ticket when you need it. Why invest in your own expensive standing army when
you could just rent one? This is why a vibrant market for force existed throughout
most of history, with today’s national armies as the exception. Put another way,
if you could go to war with 5,000 rented mercenaries or 1,000 owned soldiers,
what would you choose? Especially if your enemy had 5,000 mercenaries? Some,
like Machiavelli, chose their own soldiers, and were duly crushed. Most went with
mercenaries.
Mercenaries are everywhere in military history, starting with the Bible. The
Old Testament mentions hired warriors several times, and never with reproach.10
Everyone used them. There was King Shulgi of Ur’s army (reigned 2029–1982
BCE); Xenophon had a huge army of Greek mercenaries, known as the Ten Thou-
sand (401–399 BCE); and Carthage relied on mercenary armies in the Punic Wars
against Rome (264–146 BCE), including Hannibal’s 60,000-strong army, which
marched elephants over the Alps to attack Rome from the north. When Alexander
the Great invaded Asia in 334 BCE, his army included 5,000 foreign mercenaries,
and the Persian army he faced contained 10,000 Greeks. Rome used mercenaries
throughout its 1,000-year reign, and Julius Caesar was saved at Alesia by mounted
German mercenaries in his war against Vercingetorix in Gaul.
The Middle Ages were a mercenary heyday. Nearly half of William the Con-
queror’s army in the 11th century was made up of hired swords, as he could not
afford a large standing army and there were not enough nobles and knights to
accomplish the Norman conquest of England. King Henry II of England engaged
mercenaries to suppress the great rebellion of 1171–1174, because their loyalty lay
with their paymaster rather than with the ideals of the revolt. In Egypt and Syria,
the Mamluk sultanate (1250–1517) was a regime of mercenary slaves who had
been converted to Islam. From the late 10th to the early 15th centuries, Byzantine
emperors surrounded themselves with Norse mercenaries, the Varangian Guard,
who were known for their fierce loyalty, prowess with the battle axe, and ability to
swill vast tankards of brew.
Medieval Europe was a hot conflict market, and mercenaries were how
wars were fought. Kings, city states, wealthy families, the church—anyone rich

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enough—could hire an army to wage war for whatever reason they wanted: honor,
survival, god, theft, revenge, or amusement. Even Sir Thomas More, the great hu-
manist and author of Utopia, coining the word, advocated using mercenaries to
protect his utopian republic.
Popes even hired mercenaries, using them to obliterate enemies and purify
infidels. In 1209, Pope Innocent III launched a crusade against the Cathars, a he-
retical sect in Southern France, that would look like a war of terror today. When
his mostly mercenary army stormed the city of Béziers, both orthodox and hereti-
cal Christians fled into the church for sanctuary. The papal legate in charge, Arn-
aud Amalric, ordered the army to seal and burn it, allegedly saying, “Kill them all,
God will know his own.” The papacy still employs a Swiss guard, once a fearsome
mercenary unit but now part of the Swiss army, complete with halberds and tights.
All this led to a medieval world at war. There are uncanny parallels between
medieval mercenaries and modern ones. Back then, mercenaries were called con-
dottieri or “contractors” in old Italian, just like today. They organized into “free
companies,” now called private military companies, led by CEO-like captains who
managed profit and loss. Professional men of arms filled their ranks, coming from
different countries and united by a paycheck. They had a hierarchy of subcom-
manders and administrative machinery that oversaw the fair distribution of loot
according to an employee’s contract, or a “booty clause.” The medieval Free Com-
panies mirror the author’s own experiences 800 years later, minus the booty clause.
Warfare began to change in the 17th century, and mercenaries with it. Euro-
pean battles became increasingly violent as armies grew larger and weapons more
destructive. During the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648), major battles typically
involved 50,000 combatants, the size of a small city. Armies were predominantly
made of mercenaries, and the concept of patriotism was unconnected to military
service.11 That would come later, with the rise of nationalism, Napoleonic warfare,
and conventional war.
To meet the rising demand for fighters, mercenaries became industrialized.
Clever military enterprisers outfitted whole regiments and leased them to those
in need of martial services—the first military industrial complex. These men were
not warriors but war oligarchs, such as Count Wallenstein, who became the richest

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man in Europe during the Thirty Years’ War. Later he was killed by his client, an
occupational hazard. Rental regiments allowed rulers to wage war on an industrial
scale without long-term administrative costs, like taking care of wounded veterans
or pensions, and this lowered the barrier to entry in war while encouraging ever-
larger battles. Mercenaries never had it so good, or civilians so bad.
Things began to change in 1648. The Peace of Westphalia ended the Thirty
Years’ War, one of the most destructive in European history and comparable to
World Wars I and II for Central Europe. Nearly a third of the populations of mod-
ern Germany and the Czech Republic were wiped out, and it took the region a
century to recover. Rogue mercenary units were to blame for much of it, and lead-
ers of all sides tacitly agreed to put the free market for force out of business by mo-
nopolizing it. That is, public armies should replace private ones, costs be damned.

Private Force, Power, and World Order

The Peace of Westphalia changed a lot of other things too. All the continental
great powers were party to this peace deal that redrew the map of Europe and
rewrote the rules of power. Prior to this, Europe was run by medieval rules, which
is to say, no rules. Things were messy. All kinds of political actors—popes, kings,
city-states, wealthy families, among others—made overlapping claims of authority
to the same slices of land and serfs. Disputes inevitably erupted and were settled
on the battlefield, often fought by each side’s mercenaries.
This led to a thriving market for force. Unconstrained political rivalries, heaps
of money, and abundant private armies for hire turned medieval Europe into a war
zone like the Middle East today. The 14th-century Italian writer Franco Sacchetti
tells a story that captures what a world awash with mercenaries looks like:

Two Franciscan monks encounter a mercenary captain near his fortress.

“May God grant you peace,” the monks say, their standard greeting.
“And may God take away your alms,” replied the mercenary.
Shocked by such insolence, the monks demand explanation.
“Don’t you know that I live by war,” said the mercenary,
“and peace would destroy me? And as I live by war, so you live by alms.”

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 McFate

“And so,” Sacchetti adds, “he managed his affairs so well that there was little
peace in Italy in his times.”12

Machiavelli had a point that private warfare turns warriors into beasts and
citizens into cowards. Mercenaries not only start and expand wars for profit but
are also egged on by employers like Machiavelli’s Florence. The city was continu-
ously at war with someone: Pisa (1362–1364), the pope (1374–1375) and Milan
(1389–1390, 1399–1400, 1423–1424, and 1430). It takes both supply and demand
to grow a market, not just supply, as Machiavelli implies.
Out-of-work mercenaries also marauded between contracts, preying on the
countryside while artificially generating demand for their protection services.
This inevitably led to racketeering. An army of mercenaries would encircle a city
and demand a huge ransom in exchange for not sacking it. Desperate, the resi-
dents scavenged every last coin and treasure, handing it over to the extortionists.
“Thanks,” said the mercenary captain. “We’ll be back next year.” This was common,
and luckless Siena was obliged to buy its freedom 37 times between 1342 and 1399.
From this medieval din, one kind of political actor emerged as sheriff in
1648—states. Rogue mercenary units and the destruction of the Thirty Years’ War
proved too great, and state rulers began investing in their own standing armies,
loyal only to them. Mercenaries could existentially threaten states, so they were
outlawed. So powerful was this taboo against mercenarism that it still haunts us
today, as evidenced by reactions to the Nisour versus Haditha killings.
Over time, states monopolized the market for force with their national armies,
and this created another opportunity: domination. Their old nonstate rivals were
defenseless, without access to mercenaries or a standing army of their own. Old
medieval powerhouses such as the church, city-states like Florence, and elite aris-
tocratic families had no choice but kowtow to state rulers. Without mercenaries,
nonstate actors had no way to challenge state ascendancy.
The relationship between force, power, and world order is stark. Those who
control the means of violence get to make the rules that others must follow, or
die. The consolidation of state power was gradual, spanning 2 centuries, and gave
rise to a world order that should look familiar to readers. Sometimes called the

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“Westphalian Order,” it is a state-centric international system. It has many features,

but the key one is this: Only nation-states are sovereign, and everyone else is sub-
ordinate. States guaranteed their supremacy through their national armies, since
nonstate actors have no capacity to oppose them. In fact, the monopoly of force is
the very definition of the modern state.13
Warfare soon became an exclusively state-on-state affair fought via national
militaries, and this became “conventional war.” It is the only type of conflict Carl
von Clausewitz knew, and it puts states at the center of everything. Only they get
to wage war, make international law, and govern. The Westphalian Order spread
across the globe through European colonization, and today we have internalized it
as timeless and universal, even though it is less than 400 years old.
Mercenaries did not disappear immediately. States outlawed their use, unless
they were the client, and soon mercenaries became a state-sponsored affair, such
as the large private armies of the Dutch or British East India companies. Occa-
sionally, states would rent out their armies to other states, as German sovereigns
did to King George III during the American Revolutionary War. But eventually
mercenaries were banned. The last time a state used a mercenary army was in
1854, during the Crimean War. Mercenaries of the sea, known as “privateers,” were
also employed by states. But this too was abolished in the 1856 Paris Declaration
Respecting Maritime Law. By the 20th century, the market for force was defunct.
Mercenaries did not go extinct but were driven underground. Lone soldiers
of fortune bounced between geopolitical hot spots and were secretly hired by rebel
groups, weak governments, multinational corporations and states. The decoloni-
zation that followed World War II offered rich opportunities for these private war-
riors, especially in Africa. Some of their exploits are captured in novels and films.
Fiction can be a safer truth-teller than nonfiction when it comes to clandestine
activities.14
The mid-century surge in underground private warfare prompted Geneva
Protocols I and II in 1977 that banned mercenaries. The primary objection is that
they were warriors without a state, fighting for money rather than national ideolo-
gy. The most widely accepted definition of a mercenary in international law comes
from Article 47 of Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions, which states:

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 McFate

1. A mercenary shall not have the right to be a combatant or a prisoner of war.

2. A mercenary is any person who:
a. is especially recruited locally or abroad in order to fight in an armed
conflict;
b. does, in fact, take a direct part in the hostilities;
c. is motivated to take part in the hostilities essentially by the desire for
private gain and, in fact, is promised, by or on behalf of a Party to the conflict, mate-
rial compensation substantially in excess of that promised or paid to combatants of
similar ranks and functions in the armed forces of that Party;
d. is neither a national of a Party to the conflict nor a resident of territory
controlled by a Party to the conflict;
e. is not a member of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict; and
f. has not been sent by a State which is not a Party to the conflict on official
duty as a member of its armed forces.15

However, this law is almost unusable. The characterization of a mercenary is so

restrictive yet imprecise that anyone can wiggle out of it. As military historian and
legal scholar Geoffrey Best remarks, “any mercenary who cannot exclude himself
from this definition deserves to be shot—and his lawyer with him!”16

The Return of Mercenaries

In 1989 the Berlin Wall fell and the Cold War with it. To the Westphalian
thinker, it symbolized the everlasting triumph of the liberal-democratic state over
all others, and the Darwinian resolution of world order. In a bestselling book, The
End of History and the Last Man, scholar Francis Fukuyama asserted that the end
of the Cold War was nothing short of the “end of history” because it was “the
end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western
liberal democracy as the final form of human government.”17 World peace forever
was at hand, according to Fukuyama. He flubbed it, of course, and the phrase “end
of history” is now a meme for daft scholarship.
The fall of the Berlin Wall was more than just the end of the Cold War; it
marked the beginning of the end of the Westphalian Order, too. Rather than the

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utopia Fukuyama expected, state sovereignty began eroding everywhere. Some

states lost control of their territory, as in the conflicts in the Balkans, Indonesia,
and Sudan. Other states, such as Liberia and Somalia, failed altogether. Unconven-
tional wars spiked, and conventional ones dropped to nearly zero.18
Armed nonstate actors began taking over, just like in the Middle Ages. Ex-
amples include separatist groups in northern Mali, warlords in eastern Congo, and
violent extremists in Yemen. Drug cartels captured states for their own purposes.
These “narco-states” exist in parts of Latin American and include Guinea Bissau in
West Africa. Some wanted to topple the Westphalian Order altogether. Al Qaeda
and its imitators seek to replace states with a global caliphate, governed under
sharia law. One of the first things the so-called Islamic State did after it established
the caliphate was bulldoze the border between Iraq and Syria, also known as the
Sykes-Picot Line. There is no clearer challenge to the reign of states. The Westpha-
lian Order is collapsing in slow motion, and the National Security Strategy in 2002
declared that the United States is “now threatened less by conquering states than
we are by failing ones.”19
As state power declines, private force rises. The relationship is causal. With-
out a global sheriff, mercenaries are free to roam the world again, in the light of
day. The first public mercenary organization emerged in South Africa, ominously
called Executive Outcomes, and fought across the continent. It put down rebel
groups, took oil facilities and diamond mines, and trained client militaries for $40
million a year. During the Rwandan genocide in 1994, Executive Outcomes went
to the UN and offered to stop the genocide for $120 million, a bargain in UN
terms. However, Kofi Annan, then head of UN peacekeeping, refused, claiming
“the world may not be ready to privatize peace” as 800,000 people were massa-
cred.20 Executive Outcomes closed its doors in 1998, but left a strong alumnae
network across Africa. It was involved in mercenary actions in Equatorial Guinea
in 2005, Somalia in 2011, and Nigeria in 2015.
Other mercenary firms got their start in the years after the Berlin Wall. A few
include Sandline International, Blackwater, and Military Professional Resources In-
corporated (MPRI). These were not lone mercenaries of the Cold War but organized
ones, akin to the Free Companies of the Middle Ages. No longer in the shadows,

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they were multinational corporations, such as the medieval Free Companies, and
some were even traded on Wall Street. Their reappearance signals the decline of the
Westphalian Order and a slow return to the disorder of the age before.

The U.S. Role in Resurrecting Mercenarism

The 1990s were only a prelude for what was to come. What truly revitalized
the ancient mercenary trade was the chum-slick of American war contracts in Iraq
and Afghanistan. One would assume failing states needing strong militaries would
defibrillate mercenarism, but it was a superpower seeking political top-cover that
resurrected the industry. Like everything else in those wars, it was not planned. It
just happened.
The United States contracted out its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. For every
American Soldier in Iraq or Afghanistan, there was at least one contractor—a 1:1
ratio or greater. At the height of these wars, contractors comprised over 50 percent
of the U.S. force structure in Iraq and 70 percent in Afghanistan. By comparison,
only 10 percent of the force was contracted in World War II.21 Most contractors
were unarmed and performed innocuous tasks like cooking food or repairing
trucks. About 15 percent were mercenaries, but do not let the small numbers fool
you.22 Failures of private force have an outsize strategic impact, as evidenced by Ni-
sour Square, and this 15 percent has been enough to revive mercenarism around
the world.
Contractors did most of the bleeding, too. In 2003, contractor deaths repre-
sented only 4 percent of all fatalities. At the wars’ height, more contractors were
killed than military personnel, marking the first time in history that corporate
casualties outweighed military losses on U.S. battlefields.23 These are conservative
estimates since the United States does not track this data, and companies under-
report their wounded and dead because it is bad for business. Wounded or dead
contractors save clients money because they do not have to pay contractors’ hos-
pital bills or veteran benefits. Ultimately, contractors are disposable people, like
mercenaries in the past.
Contracting has become a new American way of war, and trendlines indicate
the United States may outsource 80 to 90 percent of its future wars. Certainly,

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Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater International, thinks it should. In 2017, he

pushed replacing all American troops in Afghanistan with contractors—in other
words, privatizing the war in Afghanistan with 100 percent mercenaries. Invoking
neocolonialism, he insisted an American “Viceroy” backed by a mercenary army
could fix the place. A year later, he posted a short video on the Internet titled The
Way Forward in Afghanistan. In it, he lambasts senior military leadership. “The
Pentagon does what it does and wanted to keep doing the same thing it has done
for the last 17 years,” Prince states in the video, calling the Pentagon’s plans “the
definition of insanity.” Instead, he states the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and
6,000 mercenaries should take charge of the conflict, ending it.24 Outlandish as this
might seem, Prince’s proposal has attracted national media attention.
How did we get here? Surely the world’s sole superpower has no need of hired
guns. It has it all: the best troops, training, technology, equipment, and resources.
But it does not have the will, and this is why it turns to military contractors. Con-
tracting enables bloodless wars, at least from the perspective of the client. Like
super technology, mercenaries are a crutch for a nation that wants to fight but
does not wish to bleed. This happened not by design but rather by accident. There
was an unanticipated collision between American domestic politics and the all-
volunteer military, a source of national pride. When the United States went to war
in Iraq and Afghanistan, the White House assumed they would be short conflicts.
“Five days or five weeks or five months, but it certainly isn’t going to last any lon-
ger than that,” Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stated on the eve of the Iraq
War. The U.S. military can “do the job and finish it fast.”25 Over a decade later,
America is still entangled in both places, unwilling to admit defeat but unable to
declare victory.
Soon Iraq and Afghanistan together became “The Long War,” as journalists
dubbed it, and America’s all-volunteer force discovered it could not recruit enough
volunteers to sustain them. This left policymakers with three terrible options. First,
they could withdraw and concede defeat in disgrace. Second, they could reinstate a
national draft to fill the ranks, like during the Vietnam War. This would be political
suicide. Third, they could use contractors to fill the ranks, relying on them mostly
for nonlethal tasks. Unsurprisingly, policymakers chose contractors.

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 McFate

Few realize that most of the contractors who fight in U.S. wars are not even
American. To keep costs down, military companies hire personnel from the de-
veloping world where military labor is cheap, making these firms densely interna-
tional. According to a Department of Defense (DOD) report, nearly 50,000 con-
tractors worked for U.S. Central Command in 2018. Of these, only 20,000 were
American. Most of these contractors were unarmed and performing nonmilitary
jobs, therefore not mercenaries. There were 2,002 armed contractors, 746 of whom
were Americans and 1,256 whom were foreigners.26
When I was in the industry, I worked alongside ex–special forces troops from
places like the Philippines, Colombia, and South Africa. We did the same mis-
sions, but they got developing world wages and I did not. Mercenaries are just
like T-shirts; they are cheaper in developing countries. Call it the globalization of
private force. What is significant for the future of the industry is that these foreign-
ers have gained valuable trade knowledge that can be exported around the world,
in search of new clients once the United States does not renew its contract. This
spreads mercenarism.
U.S. outsourcing of security has normalized the market for force, inspir-
ing warlords and other conflict entrepreneurs to start their own private military
companies. Today, most of the private military companies operating in Iraq and
Afghanistan are local and less picky than their U.S. counterparts about whom
they work for and what they do. The United States is partly to blame. For ex-
ample, take its “Host Nation Trucking” contract in 2010. Under this $2.16 billion
contract, the U.S. Army hired eight civilian trucking firms to transport supplies
to bases in Afghanistan, and also required the companies to provide their own
security. In some ways this arrangement worked well; it effectively supplied most
U.S. combat outposts across difficult and hostile terrain while only rarely needing
the assistance of U.S. troops. However, a U.S. congressional investigation revealed
that most of the prime contractors hired local Afghan private military companies
for armed protection of the trucking convoys. The congressional report, titled
Warlord, Inc., found that

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 Mercenaries and War

the principal private security subcontractors on the [Host Nation Trucking]

contract are warlords, strongmen, commanders, and militia leaders who com-
pete with the Afghan central government for power and authority. Providing
“protection” services for the United States supply chain empowers these warlords
with money, legitimacy, and a raison d’etre for their private armies.27

Like the medieval market for force, the report concludes that these indigenous
“private armies” fuel warlordism, extortion, corruption, and likely collaboration
with the enemy. It determined that “the logistics contract has an outsized strategic
impact on U.S. objectives in Afghanistan.”28
That same year a U.S. Senate report confirmed the localization of the indus-
try. In a comprehensive investigation into private military companies, the Senate
discovered that the industry was going native or, as one observer explained, “What
used to be called warlord militias are now Private Security Companies.”29 American
and British private military companies unwittingly produced the native industry by
creating local subcontractors that went into business for themselves. For example,
the British firm ArmorGroup subcontracted two Afghan security companies that
it called “Mr. White” and “Mr. Pink” to provide a guard force. The Senate investi-
gation found evidence that they were linked to murder, kidnapping, bribery, and
anti-coalition activities, and concluded that the “proliferation of private security
personnel in Afghanistan is inconsistent with the counterinsurgency strategy.”30
Problematically, the only local organizations in conflict-affected states capa-
ble of providing private security are warlords, militias, and insurgents who swell
the ranks of the marketplace. Bagram Air Base, a strategic U.S. military facility
in Afghanistan, employed a local security company run by Asil Khan, a former
commander in the Northern Alliance, a guerrilla fighting force. The Afghanistan
company Navin also supplied a guard force of 500 men and armed convoy escorts
to the air base and is owned by former mujahideen commander Lutfullah. A now-
defunct American company called U.S. Protection and Investigations partnered
with Northern Alliance military commanders like General Din Mohammad Jurat
to provide protection to former militia members. Other examples of indigenous
Afghan paramilitary firms include Watan Risk Management, Kandahar Security

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 McFate

Group, Strategic Security Solutions International, NCL Holdings, Elite Security

Services, and Asia Security Group. This model of force provision did not exist
before the United States arrived.
In some cases, these native mercenary groups have restored order yet under-
mined the very institutions the Americans sought to build—a public police force,
a national army, provincial administrations—elements of a Westphalian state. For
example, Commando Security is a company that escorts convoys between Kanda-
har and Helmand Province to the west. Ruhullah, the company’s chief, is suspected
of colluding with the Taliban, like most of his peers. According to one official at
the Interior Ministry, the “rule seems to be, if the attack is small, then crush it. But
if the presence of Taliban is too big to crush, then make a deal.” However, bribing
the enemy does not eradicate the problem and perhaps makes it worse. Afghan of-
ficials believe another company called Watan Risk Management secretly pays the
Taliban to attack North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) convoys in order
to keep the private military companies in business. Supply can generate its own
demand in a free market for force.
Like medieval mercenaries, this new breed of mercenary can prove overly bru-
tal when executing contracts, with little or no concern for human rights. Ruhullah
deals ruthlessly with those who impede the flow of his trucks regardless of whether
they are Taliban or civilian. “He’s laid waste to entire villages,” stated one Afghan
official. Watan Risk Management and Compass Security were both banned from
escorting NATO convoys on the highway between Kabul and Kandahar after a pair
of bloody confrontations with Afghan civilians. The industry’s over-utilization of
subcontractors or “subs” has produced an indigenous free market for force, replete
with homegrown mercenaries. When asked about why NATO would contract these
native private military companies, one senior NATO official stated, speaking on the
condition of anonymity, “I can’t tell you about the sub to the sub to the sub.”31
All this has led to major investment in private warfare, making war even big-
ger business. The market for force’s value remains unknown since there is no Bu-
reau of Labor and Statistics for mercenaries. DOD spent about $160 billion on
private security contractors from 2007–2012, worth almost four times the United
Kingdom’s entire defense budget.32 Moreover, this entails only military contracts

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and does not include those paid by other government agencies. For example,
Blackwater was on a State Department contract during the Nisour Square inci-
dent. The total amount the United States paid for private security is unknown, and
even Congress does not know despite the fact that it writes the checks.
Contracting is now part of the American way of war. It is one of the few issues
in Washington that enjoys true bipartisan support, as Republican and Democratic
White Houses rely on military contractors more and more, perhaps for the wrong
reasons. The implications are significant, especially for civil-military relations and
democratic control of the armed forces, since using contractors may allow the
executive branch to circumnavigate congressional oversight. Additionally, the
United States has grown strategically dependent on the private sector to sustain
wars, creating vulnerabilities that a clever adversary could exploit.

Market Globalization
Heavy U.S. reliance on military contractors has catalyzed the international
mercenary trade, with supply and demand diversifying and expanding in chilling
ways. On the supply side, the United States has marshaled a global labor pool of
mercenaries. Thousands of mercenaries got their start in Iraq or Afghanistan, and
when those wars shrank, they set out looking for new conflict markets (that is, war
zones) around the world, enlarging the wars there. The wars in Iraq and Afghani-
stan allowed the private military industry to mature, with networks of mercenaries
established and some modicum of best practices. Others are imitating the Ameri-
can model, and every day new private military groups emerge from countries like
Russia, Uganda, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Colombia. Their services are more robust
than Blackwater, offering greater combat power and the willingness to work for the
highest bidder with scant regard for human rights. They are mercenary in every
sense of the word.
On the demand side, the United States has de facto legitimized mercenaries
by using them so heavily. Can the United States really tell Russia not to use private
military troops in Syria? No, it cannot. New consumers are appearing everywhere,
seeking security in an insecure world: oil and mining companies guarding their
drill sites against militias, shipping lines defending their vessels against pirates,

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 McFate

humanitarian organizations protecting their workers in dangerous locations, oli-

garchs who need professional muscle, countries that want to wage proxy wars, re-
gimes fighting civil wars, guerrillas fighting back, and the super rich for any reason
you can think of, no matter how petty.
The mercenary trade is growing because mercenaries offer what clients want.
It is simple supply and demand. One attraction is the industry’s covert nature.
When you want to keep a secret, sometimes the private sector is murkier than gov-
ernment agencies. In the United States, for example, researchers possess tools to
investigate public sector actors, such as the military and CIA, using the Freedom
of Information Act or public hearings on Capitol Hill. Alternatively, they cultivate
leakers and other “unnamed sources” for information. Leakers are ubiquitous in
Washington and rarely held accountable.
Not so in the private sector. Private military companies hide behind “pro-
prietary knowledge,” claiming every piece of information is a trade secret. Even
employees’ emails are considered proprietary, no matter how trivial. These firms
fire employees who talk to the press, and sometimes large firms threaten media
outlets with multimillion-dollar lawsuits to chill free press. Government agencies
do not do this, as evidenced by the landslide of military memoirs of secret opera-
tions during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
An example of the public sector’s laxness is No Easy Day: The Firsthand Ac-
count of the Mission that Killed Osama Bin Laden.33 The book was written by Navy
SEAL Matt Bissonnette under the pen name Mark Owen and it detailed the highly
classified mission to kill bin Laden. DOD did nothing. At least, not immediately.
Four year later they ordered Bissonnette to return his royalties of $6.8 million to
the U.S. Government, but Owen was not tried as a felon for releasing classified
information.
If you want to keep a government secret, sometimes the private sector is bet-
ter than the Pentagon or CIA. This is attractive to some officials and a way of
circumventing democratic accountability of the Armed Forces. For example, take
the problem of mission creep. DOD uses contractors in war zones to get around
Presidentially mandated troop caps, since contractors do not count as “boots on
the ground.” In 2016, President Barack Obama capped troop levels in Afghanistan

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 Mercenaries and War

at 4,647. By 2017, that number creeped to 9,800 troops, supported by more than
26,000 contractors—nearly a 3 to 1 ratio.34 Contractors enable mission creep by
allowing DOD to “do more with less,” although it erodes civilian control of the
military.
Plausible deniability is another reason why the industry is flourishing. When
a job is too politically risky, contractors are sometimes used because they can be
disavowed if the mission fails. Not so with the CIA or military. Special operations
forces and CIA operatives do not get left behind, and this can be embarrassing
for a nation caught running covert operations. Contractors can be abandoned
with minimal political fallout. Americans do not fuss over contractor casualties,
unlike dead Marines. Tellingly, Senator Obama sponsored a bill in 2007 to make
armed contractors more accountable, a bill that President Obama later ignored.35
Russia uses mercenaries like the Wagner Group in Ukraine and Syria while deny-
ing involvement in those countries. Nigeria initially repudiated media reports of
them employing mercenaries against Boko Haram, until it became too difficult
to deny. Contractors are invisible people, making them a stealth weapon in more
ways than one.
Contractors are also cheaper, just as they have been for thousands of years.
The Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan Federal agency that provides bud-
get and economic information to Congress, found that an infantry battalion at
war costs $110 million a year, while a comparable private military unit totals $99
million. In peacetime, the costs savings are even greater; the infantry unit costs
$60 million, and the contractors cost nothing since their contract would be termi-
nated.36 From 1995 to 1997, Executive Outcomes was paid $1.2 million a month
to put down a rebellion in Sierra Leone—which it did—whereas UN forces swal-
lowed up $47 million a month doing nothing.37 Renting is cheaper than owning,
and business excels at efficiency compared to the public sector.
The cost of these savings may come at a high price. Mercenaries are not like
army reservists, to be used only when you need them. Military contractors do not
reintegrate into the civilian workforce after a war but instead look for new em-
ployers because they are profit-maximizing entities. Worse, linking profit motive

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 McFate

with killing encourages more war and suffering, making another Nisour Square
incident inevitable.
There are many reasons why private military contractors are a growth indus-
try, but most of them are dubious. The U.S. national security establishment dis-
misses the issue, but the trend is clear. Forty years ago, the idea of using armed
contractors was anathema to policymakers. Now it is routine. This is not a Demo-
cratic versus Republican issue, but an American one. Since the 1990s, Presidents
of both parties have used military contractors. More disturbing, others around
the world are imitating this model, and it is evolving into a global free market for
force.

A Glimpse Inside the Mercenary World

Little is publicly known about the cagey world of mercenaries. Government
intelligence agencies ignore them. Journalists’ and academics’ investigations are
anemic because the industry is media-phobic, owing to the clandestine nature of
its work. Reporters are rarely able to interview mercenaries and can only record
events surrounding the industry. Academics depend almost entirely on the work
of journalists for their analyses and too often contort their findings with inappro-
priate theory.
What follows is an optic into the mercenary world. It is not comprehensive,
but such a study is not feasible. Mercenaries are an illicit economy, like drug-traf-
fickers and terrorist networks, and they resist investigation. What follows is in-
formed by non-attributional interviews with active members of the industry, the
author’s 15 years of closely monitoring this issue, and his own experiences inside
the industry.
Mercenaries are not the caricatures depicted in movies. They are complex
people, like all people. It is true that some seek the lifestyle because they want to
go rogue, but most do not. When I was in the field, I met guns for hire with all
sorts of stories: some wanted adventure, others needed a paycheck, a lot were more
comfortable with war than peace, a few wished to help others (amazing but true),
and many just did not have a life plan.

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 Mercenaries and War

Being a military contractor has its practical appeals, too. A lot of American
troops were deployed multiple times to Iraq and Afghanistan. Meanwhile, their
home life was imploding: wife living with another man and filing for divorce, kids
not recognizing their dad, personal bankruptcy, and post-traumatic stress disor-
der. Rates of suicide, divorce, and domestic violence spiked among Servicemem-
bers during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.38 If a soldier refuses to go on deploy-
ment, he is court martialed. By contrast, a contractor can always say “no thanks”
to a job. A lot of American contractors I met signed up because they wanted their
life back.
Almost all mercenaries have military or national police backgrounds. There
are no mercenary basic training camps, so everyone starts somewhere else, usu-
ally in a national army. Some of the larger military companies are associated with
particular military units. In the U.S. market, for example, MPRI was mostly 82nd
Airborne Division vets back in the 1990s and early 2000s, until it was bought by
L-3. Triple Canopy was founded by ex–Delta Force Soldiers, and its name refers to
the U.S. Army’s three elite tabs—Special Forces, Ranger, and Airborne—worn on
the uniform’s left sleeve, signaling a super elite Soldier. Troops joke they look like
three parachute canopies, one above the other, hence the moniker “triple canopy.”
Blackwater was founded by former Navy SEALs and the name refers to covert un-
derwater missions at night, nicknamed “blackwater” operations because there is
zero visibility. A lot of military firms embed dog whistles to signal their credentials
to attract high-end troops.
The author has never met or heard of a female mercenary.
A dangerous trend is occurring in today’s market for force—it is bifurcat-
ing. Modern soldiers of fortune have a choice between overt or covert mercenary
groups, and it is uncertain which one will dominate. This is important because it
may influence future war, specifically who, how, and why people fight.
Overt private warriors seek legitimacy and wish to work in the open. They
rebuff the mercenary label and call themselves private security companies, ad-
vocating full transparency and accountability according to the International Or-
ganization for Standardization (ISO) 28007 and ISO 1878839 business standards.
Examples include companies like Hart Security, Janus Global Operations, Olive

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 McFate

Group (Constellis), Chenega Security, and Patriot Group International. Some,

such as GardaWorld and AEGIS Security & Investigations, even undergo third-
party audits and certification processes in accordance with the American Soci-
ety for Industrial Security (ASIS) PSC.1-201240 management standard, which had
worked with the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) to define opera-
tional standards for security companies operating in areas of armed conflict. An-
other facilitating organization is the International Code of Conduct Association
(ICOCA), a Swiss initiative that establishes industry standards that comply with
human rights and international law. From a company’s perspective, the business
model is simple: If you get certified by ANSI/ASIS PSC.1-2012 for quality man-
agement, marquee clients such as the U.S. Government and big oil companies are
more likely to hire you. Most of this business takes place in Washington, DC, New
York, London, and Dubai.
However, overt actors may disappear. Many in the industry view ANSI/ASIS
PSC.1-2012 and ICOCA standards as having more of a marketing value rather
than a commitment to best practices. Or, put another way, it is busywork good for
public relations and little else. A few CEOs confided in me their frustration with
the certification process as too much burden for too little reward. Like corporate
social responsibility, companies will abandon these efforts if the cost-benefit ratio
turns negative.
The overt business model is struggling, as marquee clients do not seem more
likely to hire certified security providers. In interviews, ICOCA staff are aware
they need to drive up the demand signal to keep their membership engaged, but
demand for overt or “legitimate” private security firms has severely dipped since
the United States left Iraq and has reduced its footprint in Afghanistan. This is
driving the entire industry underground, as it seeks new opportunities from cli-
ents not interested in transparency. This would end the world’s only effort for an
open and accountable market for force, resulting in secret wars with scant regard
for human rights or anything else. War could get medieval. The only way to pre-
vent this future is counterintuitive. Governments, international organizations,
NGOs, and other clients who claim they want a responsible private security sector
should consider employing overt actors, rather than let them literally slip to the

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dark side. Customers can pool their market power, like a cartel, to enforce their
best practices. This would shape the industry in fundamental ways, but this op-
portunity is fading.
The covert side of the market for force is far more dangerous. Mercenaries
are hired for plausible deniability and therefore operate in the shadows. Few know
the identity of the mercenaries operating in Syria, Ukraine, Nigeria, Yemen, and
elsewhere. Fewer still know who exactly retained them and what they paid. Under-
ground soldiers of fortune are employed for many reasons. Some consumers, like
oil companies, want mercenaries because they have no security forces of their own
and renting them may be preferable to relying on corrupt and incompetent host
nation forces. Others, like Nigeria, have security forces but need a niche capability,
such as Mil Mi-24 Hind attack helicopters or special operations forces teams. Still,
others hire mercenaries to do things they do not want their own people doing, like
human rights abuse. Historically, plausible deniability has always been a strong
selling point of soldiers for hire.
How do you hire mercenaries? Overt actors seek public channels, such as their
Web site and Internet job sites. Covert operations are a word-of-mouth business.
Mercenaries form informal networks of shared military background, contacts,
cultural identity, language, and so forth. When you make a deal with a client and
initiate an operation, you recruit by tapping your network. Trusted colleagues also
recruit and vouch for their hires. Contrary to Hollywood depictions, reputation
is the primary currency in the mercenary world, with money second. Those who
forget this get burned. In 2004, mercenaries attempted a takeover of oil-rich Equa-
torial Guinea. Known as the Wonga Coup, it failed because of poor operational
security. An individual recruited for the coup told South African, British, and
American authorities of the plan, leading to the arrest of most of the mercenaries.
A key problem in a word-of-mouth business are charlatans, and the merce-
nary world has many. Good recruiters can spot them with a few qualifying ques-
tions, such as: What unit were you in? What years? Who was your commander?
What operations did you conduct? Did you know Sergeant Bill Smith? What was
he like? Also, detailed questions about training works well. For example, if some-
one claims they graduated from the U.S. Army’s Jungle Warfare School, having

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them describe what they did on a day-to-day basis easily separates the frauds from
the qualified. You cannot fake it. However, this method does not scale well for
large recruitment drives.
There are two ways to find work as a covert mercenary. When you make a deal
with a client and initiate an operation, you first recruit by tapping your network.
Mercenaries form informal networks based on shared military background, con-
tacts, cultural identity, language, and so forth. There are five major mercenary net-
works today: the United States, the United Kingdom, the former Soviet republics,
Latin American special operations forces, and the Executive Outcomes “alumnae”
network in Africa. China has a small market share but could dominate the indus-
try by sheer numbers should it grow into an active network.
Alternatively, a lone soldier of fortune could show up at a conflict market (war
zone) and look for vacancies. Places like the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa,
and Afghanistan are typical. Some hope Latin America might open up, given the
drug wars, or the UN might hire peacekeepers. Unfortunately, the UN suffers a
bad reputation as a delinquent payer. Known mercenary hangouts include Irbil,
Kampala, Abu Dhabi, and Dubai. However, this can be a dodgy way to find work.
It is better to be pulled into a contract by a trusted associate than submitting to
happenstance. Worse, you could be mistaken for a journalist going undercover for
a story. Covert mercenaries hug the darkness and may thump those who threaten
to expose them. Conflict areas are not known for their rule of law, and few ask
about people who disappear.
Outside observers often assume mercenaries get paid huge sums of money.
This is inaccurate. Overt actors pay less than covert ones but offer steadier work.
During the Iraq War, contractors typically made about twice their old military
salary, which is not much if you think about the risks. For example, wounded
contractors get immediate first aid but are otherwise sent home to fend for them-
selves. Nor do contractors enjoy retirement or veteran benefits. The money on the
covert side is bigger, but so are the risks. An elite mercenary can earn four figures a
week—usually in U.S. dollars, typically through the British Virgin Islands or other
places with strong bank secrecy laws and weak extradition practices. There are

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rumors that ex-SEALs can make up to $10,000 a day working for Abu Dhabi on
Yemeni issues; if this is true, it is exceptional.
One of the oldest problems of the trade is contract enforcement. In other
words, getting paid. There are no courts to sue in, and consequently mercenaries
and their masters swindle each other. The Middle Ages and early Renaissance were
full of such scandal, as Machiavelli attests. Today, some mercenaries and clients
overcome the problem of trust by forming joint ventures in mutual business inter-
ests. This may sound odd but it aligns their profit motives. For example, Executive
Outcomes secured diamond mines from a rebel group in Sierra Leone and was
paid in cash and shares in the mines’ profits. More recently, the Syrian government
offered oil and mining concessions to Russian oil companies and their mercenar-
ies, such as Wagner Group, on the condition that they liberate them from IS. Go-
ing into business together creates a sticky bond that helps guarantee good behavior
all around.
In truth, the distance between overt and covert actors is minimal: If you can
do one, then you can do the other. The qualifications are similar and the core per-
sonnel swappable. The main difference between them is the nature of contract and
market circumstances. Today’s mercenaries offer a plethora of skillsets, but they all
provide a few basic services:

◆◆ Training. Mercenaries can improve a client’s existing security forces or build

a new one. The author honed Burundi’s elite Presidential Guard and helped build
Liberia’s military “from scratch.” This required buying and shipping arms from
Eastern Europe. Training and equipping are staples of today’s military industry.

◆◆ Protective Services. Mercenaries can protect a client’s people, places, and

things. These are defensive operations and there are a few types. First is static de-
fense, such as guarding oil pipelines or client compounds in hostile territory. Second
is mobile security for moving people, and convoy security for transporting cargo
through high-risk environments. Third are personal security details, or bodyguard
work, in dangerous places. Some firms offer specialized skills such as maritime se-
curity, bomb detection and disposal, demining and unexploded ordnance removal,

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 McFate

or bug sweeps, known as technical surveillance countermeasures. The niche market

is broad.

◆◆ Strategic Reconnaissance. This involves walking the ground, usually in a de-

nied area, to gain information or “ground truth.” Sometimes this is the only way to
learn what is actually happening. Examples include verifying an asset like a copper
mine exists, profiling an opposition group, or probing someone’s defenses. Here,
overt and covert actors differ. Overt companies will avoid violating the law and
will not conceal their identity if caught, making their services anemic. Covert ac-
tors will infiltrate hostile territory under false pretenses, may violate the law, and
will conduct necessary clandestine actions to achieve the mission.

◆◆ Direct Action. These are offensive military operations and only covert op-
erators conduct such missions. This includes search and destroy missions, seizing
denied assets by force, capturing specified people, rescuing friendlies in hostile
territory, ambushing a target, or raiding an adversary’s territory. People die.

Occasionally, mercenaries are retained by private intelligence agencies, another

secretive world. In fact, a few companies like AEGIS Security & Investigations and
Control Risks offer both private military and intelligence services. Few have heard
of private intelligence companies, and that is by design. They offer investigative ser-
vices for corporate due diligence or litigation support. However, a few are agents of
plausible deniability, providing rare skills and acting as cut outs for clients. Because
of this they shun publicity and advertise by word of mouth with a minimal Web
presence. Examples of private intelligence companies include Hakluyt & Company,
Veracity Worldwide, and Black Cube. These are not Ph.D. nerds estimating political
risk by formula. Rather, they are ex-CIA, Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), Mossad,
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), DOD, and others with experience running
human intelligence networks to obtain sensitive information, or what the industry
calls “hard-to-get elicitation.”
Who needs their own CIA? Anyone dealing in dangerous places where every-
one lies to you—for example, oil companies operating in the Middle East or multi-
national corporations working in Africa. The financial services industry hires them
for tough due diligence investigations in places such as Nigeria or Russia, where

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corruption is endemic. Insurance companies use them for political risk analysis,
especially regarding foreign country stability, nationalization of client assets, and
likelihood of armed conflict. Law firms retain them for litigation support, and the
super wealthy hire them for whatever they want. They are sometimes hired to spy
on competitors and perform dirty tricks. Governments are the one client this in-
dustry will refuse. Private intelligence companies support commercial diplomacy
that minimizes official involvement, and accepting government contracts would
cost them private-sector customers.
In terms of staff, most private intelligence agencies are small. Many are found-
ed by ex-spooks, but their core staff often includes former journalists, FBI inves-
tigators, corporate lawyers, ex-military, and fresh college graduates. Beyond this,
they rely on a global network of subcontractors, or “stringers,” for project work.
Stringers can range from a retired CIA chief of station to an overseas journalist
to a street urchin. Fees are expensive; a monthly retainer will cost you four to five
figures and sometimes more, not including expenses. Due to the sensitivity of their
work, these firms only deal with the C-Suite (for example, a CEO or COO), the
general counsel’s office, and sometimes corporate security. The industry is based
in New York City, London, and Washington, DC.
What private intelligence companies can accomplish is impressive and dis-
turbing in equal measure. Like military companies, private intelligence firms
shroud their offerings in euphemisms such as competitive intelligence, risk con-
sulting, security management, strategic advisory services, exotic due diligence,
and risk avoidance. What they really do is asset tracing and recovery, interna-
tional investigations, threat assessment, facilitation or cut-out services, corporate
espionage, and “shaping operations”—manipulating situations in favor of client
interests. Needless to say, these firms operate in the moral and legal gray areas of
world affairs, similar to mercenaries. Perhaps this is one of the gravitational pulls
between the two industries.
What little the public knows about private intelligence comes from their fail-
ures, which often makes national news. While not the best metric of success, it
does provide insight into what these firms do:

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 McFate

◆◆ Corporate Espionage. Spying is more than just observation; it is about

obtaining key information by any means necessary. In 2005, Guy Enright, an
accountant for KPMG Financial Advisory Services in Bermuda, got a call from
MI6. The man spoke in a crisp British accent and stated he needed information
about a KPMG project that had national security implications for Britain. Enright,
who was born in Britain, agreed to meet. Several meetings later he was depositing
confidential audit documents in plastic containers at dead drops for the MI6 of-
ficer. Except the spy did not work for MI6 but rather Diligence, Inc., a Washington
private intelligence firm. Diligence’s client was Barbour, Griffith & Rogers (BGR
Group), a formidable lobbying firm. BGR Group’s client was a Russian conglomer-
ate whose archrival, IPOC International Growth Fund, Ltd., was being audited by
KPMG’s Bermuda office.

◆◆ Sly Investigations. When normal fact-finding techniques lead to a dead end

or are politically unacceptable, seek out a private intelligence agency. In 2006,

Hewlett-Packard suffered embarrassing media stories about internal delibera-
tions. The company’s chairperson suspected an insider threat and secretly hired
Action Research Group, Inc., to root out the leaker. They obtained the phone re-
cords of board members, employees, and journalists by pretexting—calling up
phone companies and impersonating individuals seeking their own records. They
even considered sneaking into the San Francisco offices of the Wall Street Journal,
posing as a cleaning crew, to snoop. Soon they discovered the leaker was a dis-
gruntled board member.

◆◆ Opposition Research. As the saying goes, keep your friends close and your
enemies closer. That is what Shell and BP did with Greenpeace, an activist environ-
mental group that opposes big oil. They hired Hackluyt & Company to infiltrate
Greenpeace, which it did by sending in an undercover agent posing as a left-wing
filmmaker to uncover secret plans Greenpeace was making against the oil compa-
nies. Undercover personnel can also act as agents of influence to change the minds
of key leaders through subtle persuasion and disinformation. It is not just activist
groups, either. These companies can infiltrate political parties, labor unions, rival
companies, and governments. To a limited extent, they can even get inside armed

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groups and criminal networks by turning members through bribery or blackmail,

or sending mercenaries on a strategic reconnaissance.

◆◆ Intimidation. Harvey Weinstein was a titan of Hollywood until his Icarus-like

fall in 2017, when more than 80 women accused him of rape, sexual assault, and
sexual abuse over a period of 30 years. One of Weinstein’s attorneys, David Boies,
hired an Israeli private intelligence firm called Black Cube to halt the publication
of sexual-misconduct allegations against Weinstein. Black Cube operatives used
false identities to “get dirt” on accusers and reporters in order to bully them into
silence. Similarly, someone hired Black Cube to disgrace the Iran nuclear deal in
American politics. The firm’s agents were instructed to find damaging information
on officials in the Obama White House who helped negotiate the deal, including
unsubstantiated claims that they worked closely with Iran lobbyists for personal
profit. However, both projects backfired and made headline news. Black Cube now
has its own Wikipedia page, a deathblow in the private intelligence industry.

These are the failures of private intelligence; their successes are impressive
and terrifying. Expect both the mercenary and private intelligence industries to
grow commensurately with wealthy nonstate actors in the coming decades. The
global 1 percent is evolving into a new class of world power as military and in-
telligence capabilities are privatized and available in the marketplace. These twin
industries allow Fortune magazine’s “Fortune 500” and Forbes’s “The World’s Bil-
lionaires” to become armed and dangerous. Already they are more powerful than
most states. Can anyone really argue that Gabon is more influential in world affairs
than ExxonMobil simply because it is a state? Now ExxonMobil can have its own
intelligence service and army too, making it even more powerful. This introduces
the possibility of wars without states—private wars—a concept inconceivable to
most national security leaders. This is the danger. You cannot win wars you do not
understand.

Understanding Private Warfare

Privatizing war distorts warfare in shocking ways. If conflict is commoditized,
then the logic of the marketplace and the strategies of the souk apply to war. A

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souk is an Arab open market, and it is a good analogy for how private wars work.
In a souk, everything is up for sale and must be bartered. Anything goes. Fraud,
deception, deceit, and hard bargaining are the watchwords. But so are value, rare
finds, and exotic merchandise. Treasures are to be had, and for cheap—if one
knows what one is doing. If not, expect to be scammed; this unregulated space is
not for amateurs. There are no refunds, returns, or exchanges. Only street savvy
buyers should engage and the best advice is also the oldest: caveat emptor, Latin
for “let the buyer beware.” In the context of war, the implications are grave, as
Machiavelli warns us.
Privatizing war changes warfare in dangerous ways. First, private war has its
own logic: Clausewitz meets Adam Smith, the father of economics. For-profit war-
riors are not bound by political considerations or patriotism, one of their chief
selling points. They are market actors and their main restraint is not the laws of
war but the laws of economics. The implications of this are far-reaching. This in-
troduces new strategic possibilities known to CEOs but alien to generals, putting
us at risk.
Second, private war lowers the barriers to entry for war. Mercenaries allow
clients to fight without having their own blood on the gambling table, and this
creates moral hazard among consumers. Mercenaries are rented forces, and clients
may be more carefree about going to war if their people do not have to bleed. Mer-
cenary leaders might not care either if they do not have to fight themselves and
instead order others into combat. Private warriors are expendable humans, and
this emboldens recklessness that could start and elongate wars.
Third, private war breeds war. It is simple supply and demand as mercenar-
ies and their masters feed off each other. The marketplace works like any other:
Mercenaries and clients seek each other out, negotiate prices, and wage war for
private gain. This prompts other buyers to do the same in self-defense. As soldiers
of fortune flood the market, the price for their services drops and new buyers hire
them for additional private wars. This cycle continues until the region is swamped
in conflict, as it was in Machiavelli’s day.
Private war’s inclination toward intensification is a result of its economic na-
ture. Clausewitz observed that the nature of absolute war is escalation; privatized

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warfare exemplifies this because it is fueled by the profit motive. On the supply
side, mercenaries do not want to work themselves out of a job. Instead, they are
incentivized to start and elongate conflicts for profit. Out-of-work mercenaries
become marauders, preying on the countryside for sustenance and artificially
generating demand for their services. Sometimes they engage in racketeering and
extortion of the defenseless. There is abundant historical evidence for this. “We
find that our [mercenary] forces have cost the country a great deal and done much
wanton damage,” declared one ruler during the Thirty Years’ War. “The enemy
could not have done worse.”41
On the demand side, the availability of mercenaries means buyers who had
not previously contemplated military action can now do so. The world has already
seen multinational corporations, governments, and millionaires hire mercenaries
in the past decade; that was not the case two decades ago. The availability of private
force lowers the barriers of entry into armed conflict for those who can afford it,
tempting even more war.
Fourth, private war creates a security dilemma. In such a dangerous environ-
ment buyers retain mercenaries for purely defensive purposes, but this can back-
fire. Other buyers watch this and suspect the worst, namely a surprise attack, and
procure twice as many mercenaries for protection. This prompts the first buyer,
who also assumes the worst, to buy even more mercenaries, and soon an arms
race ensues. The danger is when all sides escalate and they unleash their forces.
This lateral escalation creates a security dilemma because people who do not wish
to fight end up doing so anyway. More belligerents are possible in private wars
compared to public ones, and therefore there is more chance of this happening.
Fifth, weak contract enforcement and double-crossing is the bane of private
warfare. When mercenaries and their masters have a dispute, there are no courts
of law to sue for breach of contract. Instead, things are settled by blood and treach-
ery. Greedy mercenaries may wish to traitorously renegotiate their contract with
violence, steal their client’s property, or accept bribes from the client’s enemies not
to fight. Buyers who do not pay their bills may become victims of their own mer-
cenaries unless they hire a bigger mercenary outfit to chase them off. But this also

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 McFate

invites bigger problems. Since there are no laws of war in private warfare, market
failure in this context means savagery.
Wars without states is the antithesis of conventional warfare and why modern
militaries are unprepared for it. To them, private war is an oxymoron—a dan-
gerously naïve assumption. Private warfare has been with us for millennia, even
though it is forgotten by modern strategists. In a free market for force, business
strategies meld with military ones. In other words, private wars are driven less by
politics than by political economy. Owing to this nuance, the conventional strate-
gic thinker will have problems identifying private wars, much less devising strate-
gies to defeat them.

Strategies for Private Wars

Not all wars without states will be marketized, but many will. Some wars will
be political, fought by national armies or insurgents, but they might turn to merce-
nary help as it becomes available. Modern strategic thought has no logic or gram-
mar for private war; its goals might not even be political in nature. This must be
remedied because private warfare is an emerging trend.
In terms of strategy for private war, the Italian Wars (1494–1559) are instruc-
tive. They were dominated by mercenaries since no one could afford their own
standing army. Machiavelli tried this and Florence paid for his imprudence in
blood. The Italian Wars represent private warfare in extremis, but maximal exam-
ples make phenomenon more transparent. Still, the parallels between then and now
are striking. For instance, back then mercenaries were called condottieri—literally,
“contractors”—who agreed to perform military operations described in a written
contract, or condotte. Both modern and early contractors sold their services to the
highest or most powerful bidder for profit and operated in military units rather
than as lone wolf mercenaries often depicted by Hollywood. Both filled their ranks
with professional men of arms drawn from different countries and loyal primar-
ily to the paycheck. Both have functioned as private armies, usually offering land-
based combat skills rather than naval (or aerial) capabilities and deploying force in
a military manner rather than as law enforcement or police.

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The Italian Wars teach us that cunning and deception are the watchwords
of private warfare, therefore lending itself more to Sun Tzu than Clausewitz. A
full historical analysis of the Italian Wars is beyond the scope of this study, but
key points can be gleaned.42 Below are unique ways to win private wars, divided
between buyers (demand side) and force providers (supply side). The marketplace
demands an asymmetry of strategy.
Buyers have ample opportunity to swindle mercenaries. Marketplace strata-
gems include: bribing the enemy’s mercenaries to defect, retaining all mercenaries
in the area to deny the enemy a defense, and reneging on paying mercenaries once
they complete the military campaign. Sometimes, clients hired a larger mercenary
group on a short-term contract to chase off or kill unpaid mercenaries.
Wealthy clients can also wield market power to change the winds of war. For
example, they can buy all the mercenaries available in a region, driving prices up,
then dump them on the market, driving prices down and creating mayhem for
enemies who are dependent on hired guns for survival. Rich actors can bankrupt
adversaries by stoking a mercenary arms race or outspending rivals in a war of at-
trition. Mercenaries have a bigger recruiting pool than national armies, which are
limited to their country’s citizenry. The mercenary labor pool is global, allowing
longer wars of attrition.
Mercenaries enable strategies of cunning and deception. Clients can hire
them as agent provocateurs, drawing rivals into wars of the client’s choosing.
Mercenaries are well-adapted for covert actions and “zero footprint” operations,
maximizing plausible deniability for the client. This is useful for conducting wars
of atrocity: torture, assassination, intimidation operations, terrorism, civilian
massacres, high collateral damage missions, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. Some
clients might prefer to outsource human rights violations rather than have their
troops caught in the act.
Similarly, clients might hire the private sector for “false flag” operations—for
instance, secretly hire mercenaries to instigate a war between one’s enemies, re-
ducing them while keeping the client’s name out of it. Alternately, one can hire
mercenaries for mimicry operations to frame enemies for massacres, terrorism,
and other atrocities that provoke a backlash.

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 McFate

Despite Machiavelli’s rants, buyers can act unfaithfully toward mercenaries.

Knowing the high danger of a mission, a client can misrepresent the threat so
that mercenary casualties will be extreme. Once they have achieved the mission
the buyer cuts them loose and does not pay them. They will be too weak to chal-
lenge the client. There are also amoral hedging strategies. For example, a buyer
might contract multiple mercenary units to pursue the same objective without
telling them. Each uses different strategic approaches, sometimes working at cross
purposes. The client rewards the first unit that completes the mission and the rest
are cut loose, unpaid for their sacrifices. Lastly, a client can secretly hire multiple
mercenary units to kill each other, thinning out their numbers and making them
easier to control or swindle.
Mercenaries can also cheat their masters. Profit motive incentivizes them to
start and/or elongate wars. This includes playing multiple potential clients off one
another to foster mistrust that leads to more war contracts. Asymmetries of exper-
tise allow force providers to manipulate key military information to influence the
client’s business decisions in favor of the mercenary’s interests. Then there is the
classic shakedown strategy: either blackmailing their client for more money at a
crucial moment or selling out the client to the enemy for a greater return. Bribery
was a powerful weapon during the Italian Wars. Force providers can also act as a
cartel by secretly cutting deals among each other and negotiating a war outcome
that benefits all mercenaries at the expense of clients. “A rising tide lifts all boats”
is an aphorism of economic theory.
Between contracts, mercenaries often sustain themselves through banditry,
destabilizing whole regions. For them, it has the added benefit of artificially gen-
erating demand for their protection services. This can lead to extortion and rack-
eteering. They threaten to lay waste to a community unless it pays for protection
money, similar to the Mafia. Then they try to establish payments on a rotating
basis and raise prices whenever possible. Mergers and acquisitions occur in the
market for force. One approach is for larger force providers to buy smaller one,
giving them market power. Alternatively, they can kill off the competition and
become monopolists so they can raise prices.

40  
 Mercenaries and War

Another strategy is praetorianism, a term deriving from the infamous Praeto-

rian Guard, the imperial bodyguard of the Roman emperors established by Augus-
tus Caesar. During its 300-year existence, it assassinated 14 emperors, appointed
5, and even sold the office to the highest bidder on one occasion. Mercenaries can
hold a weak client hostage and bleed him dry of wealth for as long as possible and
then look for a new host when finished. Alternately, they can establish a warlord
kingdom to extract wealth from the area. This is especially attractive in highly
volatile regions rich in natural resources. Or they can capture a high-value asset
like an oil field or small city and sell it back to the owner. When complete, they can
ask for a contract to protect it from other mercenaries.
These are just a sampling of strategies peculiar to private warfare. Not one
of them is taught in war colleges or studied in civilian security studies programs,
leading to a gap in our strategic IQ. Private wars do not behave like public ones and
some of the best weapons may not fire bullets. It is possible to undermine merce-
naries and their masters, but not by using traditional war strategies.

An Unstoppable Trend
Mercenaries are back, with nothing to impede their growth. To date, Washing-
ton has ignored this trend—a dangerous oversight. Mercenaries may not directly
threaten the U.S. homeland, but they can challenge American allies and interests
across the globe. Annihilating them is a losing strategy. You can kill individuals but
not the market conditions that give rise to mercenarism in the first place. Trying to
kill your way out of this problem is playing Whac-A-Mole for mercenaries. Unfor-
tunately, other approaches are equally problematic.
The market for force cannot be regulated because mercenaries can kill law
enforcement. International public law is feeble and difficult to enforce. One famed
legal scholar called it the “vanishing point of law,” since it is followed by courtesy
rather than compellence.43 This is especially true with the Law of Armed Conflict.
There is no international judiciary, police force, or prisons so there is little conse-
quence for violating the law. Just ask Vladimir Putin, who stole Crimea. Who is
going to enter Ukraine and Syria to arrest all those mercenaries? The 82nd Airborne

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 McFate

Division? UN Blue Helmets? Unlikely. Besides, if they did, the mercenaries would
probably shoot back.
Some believe accountability can be maintained if Washington places military
contractors under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. However, this solves little.
First, it does not apply to the bulk of mercenaries today, who are not on a U.S. con-
tract. Second, for those hired by Washington, the solution is impractical. Take, for
example, the issue of jurisdiction. What happens if a Colombian private military
contractor kills an Afghan family while on an American contract? Does he go
to trial in Afghanistan, the United States, Colombia, or nowhere? No one really
knows, and a good labor lawyer could probably shred the case in minutes.
Others recommend that the international community hold mercenaries’
clients accountable and sue them. This could disincentivize hiring mercenaries
and diminish the industry. However, this too has its problems. It is not clear that
adequate laws exist around the world for this approach. Even if they did, many
buyers in the market for force are states like Russia, Nigeria, and the United Arab
Emirates. It would be difficult to sue them and achieve meaningful consequences.
Nonstate actors are trickier. If you press them too hard they will move offshore,
beyond the reach of the law. Big corporations already do this to evade taxes.
Some think the answer is self-regulation, such as the ICOCA. While a noble
effort, it does not apply to covert mercenary actors who are the major threat to
international order. They dwell in the shadows and would never sign up to a public
registry. It is also questionable whether self-regulation curbs bad behavior among
overt actors since a voluntary code of conduct is not a regulation; it is like being a
member of a club. The worse that can happen to those caught violating the code
is being kicked out of the ICOCA. Such costs are not high enough to bring bad
actors to heel.
Some suggest market mechanisms to shape industry behavior. Super-buyers
can use their market power to establish “rules of the road” by rewarding good force
providers with lucrative contracts while driving the rest out of business. Who is
a super-buyer? The United States was during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and
the UN could be if it privatizes peacekeeping. However, the United States did not
do this and the UN probably will not either. Alternatively, a cartel of buyers could

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accomplish it, but cartels are tough to maintain because defection is cheap while
holding fast is expensive. Or the world could achieve what states did after 1648
and slowly monopolize the market. For this to work, all countries would have to
pool their resources to abolish mercenarism in a unified front for decades to come.
World peace might be easier.
Unfortunately, mercenaries are here to stay. Those who think the private mili-
tary industry can be safely ignored, regulated, or categorically banned are too late.
After 150 years underground, the market for force has returned in just two decades
and it is growing at an alarming rate. As the market expands, security will become
a good investment and fuel the marketplace in a self-feeding loop. New consumers
will seek security in an increasingly insecure world and new mercenaries will pop
up to meet their demand. Expect future conflict markets in the usual global hot
spots. However, introducing an industry vested in conflict into the most conflict-
prone places on Earth is vexing since it exacerbates war and misery.
The re-emergence of mercenaries is one of the most dangerous trends of our
time, yet it is invisible to most observers. That is by design. The implications of a
resurrected market for force in world affairs are substantial. Offering the means of
war to anyone who can afford it will transform warfare and the future of war. If
money can buy firepower, then large corporations and the super-rich will become
a new kind of superpower. This will rewrite the rules of global order, not seen since
1648. Who, how, and why people fight will change, and there will be wars without
states, accelerating global chaos. Like the issue of terrorism in the 1990s, we need
to boost our strategic IQ on private warfare or suffer a strategic surprise.

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Acknowledgments
The author is grateful to the College of International Security Affairs at the
National Defense University for granting him time to complete the research and
writing of this monograph. He is also appreciative for the Minerva grant from the
Department of Defense that helped support this work. Lastly, he is indebted to the
advice and fellowship of the Changing Character of War Program at the Univer-
sity of Oxford. Special insight was gleaned from primary sources at Codrington
Library in All Souls College, Oxford, and the state archives of Florence, Italy.

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Notes
1
Thomas Gibbons-Neff, “How a 4-Hour Battle Between Russian Mercenaries and
U.S. Commandoes Unfolded in Syria,” New York Times, May 24, 2018, available at <www.
nytimes.com/2018/05/24/world/middleeast/american-commandos-russian-mercenaries-
syria.html>; “U.S. Forces Deploy to Conoco Gas Plant in Anticipation of Iranian Ad-
vance,” Alsouria Net, February 18, 2018, available at <http://syrianobserver.com/EN/
News/33850/U_S_Forces_Deploy_Conoco_Gas_Plant_Anticipation_Iranian_Advance>.
2
A notable exception is the Private Security Monitor project at the Sié Chéou-Kang
Center for International Security and Diplomacy at the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel
School of International Studies. The project is under the direction of Deborah Avant, a
longtime expert in this issue. Details are available at <http://psm.du.edu/index.html>.
3
To accomplish this, the United Nations (UN) would have to establish a licensing
and registration regime that all industry members must observe in order to prequalify for
contracts with the organization. This would entail clear standards and policies regulat-
ing all industry activities plus clear mechanisms of oversight and accountability. At a
minimum, this regime should include the following elements: registration criteria, ethical
code of conduct, employee vetting standards, mechanisms of transparency and account-
ability, permissible clients (that is, sanctioned by the UN Security Council), training and
safety standards, contractual standards, and compliance enforcement mechanisms such
as audits. Contract instruments must be in place to ensure swift deployment of private
military companies should a humanitarian catastrophe arise. It would be impermissible to
lose a key advantage of the private sector’s rapid response and surge capacity to bureau-
cratic dithering.
4
Harvey Morris, “Activists Turn to Blackwater for Darfur Help,” Financial Times, June
18, 2008, available at <www.ft.com/content/4699eda6-3d65-11dd-bbb5-0000779fd2ac>.
5
International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 28007-1:2015, Ships and
Marine Technology: Guidelines for Private Maritime Security Companies (PMSC) Providing
Privately Contracted Armed Security Personnel (PCASP) on Board Ships (and Pro Forma
Contract) (Geneva: ISO, April 1, 2015).
6
For more on this, see Heather Elms and Robert A. Phillips, “Private Security Com-
panies and Institutional Legitimacy: Corporate and Stakeholder Responsibility,” Business
Ethics Quarterly 19, no. 3 (2009), 403–432; Deborah D. Avant, “Pragmatic Networks and
Transnational Governance of Private Military and Security Services,” International Studies
Quarterly 60, no. 2 (2016), 330–342; Andreas Kruck, “Theorising the Use of Private Mili-
tary and Security Companies: A Synthetic Perspective,” Journal of International Relations
and Development 17, no. 1 (2014), 112–141; and James Pattison, The Morality of Private
War: The Challenge of Private Military and Security Companies (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2014).

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 McFate

7
“Excerpts from Army Maj. Gen. Eldon A. Bargewell’s Report,” Washington Post,
April 21, 2007.
8
Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince and Other Works, trans. Allan H. Gilbert (New
York: Hendricks House, 1964), 131.
9
I am grateful to the Archivio di Stato di Firenze for their research support. On
scholarly critique regarding Machiavelli, see Quentin Skinner, Machiavelli: A Very Short
Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 36–37; Christopher Coker, Barba-
rous Philosophers: Reflections on the Nature of War from Heraclitus to Heisenberg (New
York: Columbia University Press, 2010), 139–151; James Jay Carafano, Private Sector, Pub-
lic Wars: Contractors in Combat—Afghanistan, Iraq, and Future Conflicts (Westport, CT:
Praeger Security International, 2008), 19; Sarah Percy, Mercenaries: The History of a Norm
in International Relations (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).
10
See Jeremiah 46:20–21; 2 Samuel 10:6; 1 Chronicles 19:7; 2 Kings 11:4; 2 Chronicles
25:6; 2 Kings 7:6–7; 2 Samuel 10:6; 1 Chronicles 19:6–7; and 2 Chronicles 25:5–6.
11
Examples of big battles include White Mountain (1620), Breitenfeld (1631), Lützen
(1632), Nördlingen (1634), Wittstock (1636), and Rocroi (1643). Armies consisted mostly
of foreign mercenaries. For example, the majority of Sweden’s military was mercenary,
a significant number given that Sweden was a military superpower at the time and King
Gustavus Adolphus was one of the great innovators of maneuver warfare. At the Battle
of Breitenfeld, only 20 percent of Sweden’s army consisted of Swedes, and at the Battle of
Lutzen the figure was 18 percent. This was typical of the time. See Geoffrey Parker, Europe
in Crisis, 1598–1648 (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2001), 17.
12
Franco Sacchetti, Il Trecentonovelle, novella CLXXXI (Torino: Einaudi, 1970), 528–
529. For more on this period, see William Caferro, John Hawkwood: An English Mercenary
in Fourteenth-Century Italy (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006).
13
For instance, in 1919 the eminent German sociologist Max Weber defined the state
as “a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of
physical force within a given territory.” This definition remains widely used today, and
states that cannot maintain a monopoly of force and endure civil war or frequent violent
crime are routinely described as “weak,” “fragile,” or “failed” states. See H.H. Gerth and
C. Wright Mills, eds., From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (London: Routledge, 2003),
77–128.
14
The Katanga secession and Congo Crisis of 1960–1968 attracted hundreds of mer-
cenaries, some known as Les Affreux (The Frightfuls), and included the Irishman “Mad”
Mike Hoare and the Frenchman Bob Denard. Their exploits informed the novel The Wild
Geese by Daniel Carney and the 1978 film by the same name, for which Hoare was a tech-
nical advisor. There is also the film The Dogs of War (1980), based on a Frederick Forsyth
novel, inspired by the life of Denard. For a modern account of mercenaries, the author
recommends the Tom Locke novel series (William Morrow).

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 Mercenaries and War

15
International Committee of the Red Cross, “Protocol Additional to the Geneva
Conventions of 12 August 1949, and Relating to the Protection of Victims of International
Armed Conflicts (Protocol I) of 8 June 1977,” Geneva, Switzerland, May 2010, available at
<www.icrc.org/eng/assets/files/other/icrc_002_0321.pdf>.
16
Originally quoted in Geoffrey Best, Humanity in Warfare (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1980), 375.
17
Francis Fukuyama, “The End of History?” The National Interest, no. 16 (Summer
1989), 4.
18
Kendra Dupuy et al., “Trends in Armed Conflict, 1946–2015,” Peace Research
Institute Oslo (August 2016), available at <www.prio.org/utility/DownloadFile.ashx?id=1
5&type=publicationfile>. For other studies, see “COW War Data, 1816–2007 (v4.0),” The
Correlates of War Project, last updated December 8, 2011, available at <www.correlatesof-
war.org/data-sets>; Meredith Reid Sarkees and Frank Wayman, Resort to War: 1816–2007
(Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2010); Uppsala Conflict Data Program/Department of
Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala Universitet, December 31, 2016, available at <www.
ucdp.uu.se/gpdatabase/search.php>; see also Nils Petter Gleditsch et al., “Armed Conflict
1946–2001: A New Dataset,” Journal of Peace Research 39, no. 5 (2002), 615–637; see also
Kalevi Holsti, Kalevi Holsti: Major Texts on War, the State, Peace, and International Order
(Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing AG, 2016), 42.
19
The National Security Strategy of the United States of America (Washington, DC: The
White House, 2002), 1.
20
“Secretary-General Reflects on ‘Intervention’ in Thirty-Fifth Annual Ditchley
Foundation Lecture,” UN Press Release, SG/SM/6613, June 26, 1998, available at <www.
un.org/News/Press/docs/1998/19980626.sgsm6613.html>.
21
Government Accountability Office (GAO), Defense Management: DOD Needs to
Reexamine Its Extensive Reliance on Contractors and Continue to Improve Management
and Oversight, GAO-08-572T (Washington, DC: GAO, May 11, 2008); Moshe Schwartz,
Department of Defense Contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan: Background and Analysis,
R40764 (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service [CRS], July 2, 2010), 5; Jen-
nifer Elsea, Moshe Schwartz, and Kennon H. Nakamura, Private Security Contractors in
Iraq: Background, Legal Status, and Other Issues, RL32419 (Washington, DC: CRS, August
25, 2008).
22
U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Oversight and Government Reform,
Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs, Warlord, Inc.: Extortion and Cor-
ruption along the U.S. Supply Chain in Afghanistan, June 22, 2010, 15, available at <http://
media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/world/documents/warlords.pdf>; Schwartz, Depart-
ment of Defense Contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan, 8.
23
Steven L. Schooner and Collin D. Swan, “Contractors and the Ultimate Sacrifice,”
The George Washington University Law School, Public Law and Legal Theory Working

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 McFate

Paper, no. 512 (September 2010); GAO, Contingency Contracting: DOD, State, and USAID
Continue to Face Challenges in Tracking Contractor Personnel and Contracts in Iraq and
Afghanistan, GAO-10-1 (Washington, DC: GAO, October 1, 2009); T. Christian Miller,
“Civilian Contractor Toll in Iraq and Afghanistan Ignored By Defense Dept.,” ProPublica,
October 9, 2009; Justin Elliott, “Hundreds of Afghanistan Contractor Deaths Go Unreport-
ed,” Salon.com, July 15, 2010; “Statistics on the Private Security Industry,” Private Security
Monitor, Sié Chéou-Kang Center for International Security and Diplomacy, University
of Denver, available at <http://psm.du.edu/articles_reports_statistics/data_and_statistics.
html>.
24
See Erik D. Prince, “The MacArthur Model for Afghanistan,” Wall Street Journal,
May 31, 2017, available at <www.wsj.com/articles/the-macarthur-model-for-afghani-
stan-1496269058>; Justin Wise, “Blackwater Founder Makes New Pitch for Mercenaries
to Take Over Afghan War,” The Hill, July 12, 2018, available at <http://thehill.com/policy/
defense/396714-blackwater-founder-proposes-mercenary-takeover-in-afghanistan-
amidst-mueller-probe>.
25
John Esterbrook, “Rumsfeld: It Would Be a Short War,” CBS News, November 15,
2002, available at <www.cbsnews.com/news/rumsfeld-it-would-be-a-short-war/>.
26
Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Sustainment, “Contractor Support
of U.S. Operations in the USCENTCOM Area of Responsibility, to Include Iraq and Af-
ghanistan (5A Papers),” July 2018, available at <www.acq.osd.mil/log/ps/.CENTCOM_re-
ports.html/5A_July%202018_Final.pdf>.
27
U.S. House of Representatives, Warlord, Inc., 2.
28
Ibid.
29
U.S. Senate, Inquiry Into the Role and Oversight of Private Security Contractors in Af-
ghanistan, Report Together with Additional Views of the Committee on Armed Services,
111th Cong., 2nd sess., Sept 10, 2010, i, available at <https://fas.org/irp/congress/2010_rpt/
sasc-psc.pdf>.
30
Dexter Filkins, “Convoy Guards in Afghanistan Face an Inquiry,” New York Times,
June 6, 2010, available at <www.nytimes.com/2010/06/07/world/asia/07convoys.html>.
31
Ibid.; U.S. House of Representatives, Warlord, Inc.
32
Moshe Schwartz and Jennifer Church, Department of Defense’s Use of Contractors
to Support Military Operations: Background, Analysis, and Issues for Congress, R43074
(Washington, DC: CRS, May 17, 2013), 2. For the 2012 United Kingdom defense budget,
see Christopher Chantrill, UK Public Spending Web site, available at <www.ukpublic-
spending.co.uk/budget_current.php?title=uk_defense_budget&year=2012&fy=2012&exp
and=30>.
33
Mark Owen, No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama
Bin Laden, with Kevin Maurer (New York: Penguin, 2014).

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34
Dan Lamothe and Loveday Morris, “Pentagon Will Send Hundreds More Troops to
Iraq Following Seizure of Key Airfield,” Washington Post, July 11, 2016, available at <www.
washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2016/07/11/seizure-of-key-air-base-near-mo-
sul-raises-prospect-of-u-s-escalation-against-isis/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.aceef5b-
5db35>; Corey Dickstein, “Lawmakers Question Iraq and Afghanistan Troop Caps, Use of
Contractors,” Star and Stripes, available at <www.stripes.com/news/lawmakers-question-
iraq-and-afghanistan-troop-caps-use-of-contractors-1.442172#>; and Skye Gould and
Daniel Brown, “Here’s How Many U.S. Troops and Private Contractors Have Been Sent to
Afghanistan,” Business Insider, August 22, 2017, available at <www.businessinsider.com/
this-is-how-many-private-contractors-and-us-troops-are-in-afghanistan-2017-8>.
35
U.S. Senate, Transparency and Accountability in Military and Security Contracting
Act of 2007, S. 674, 110th Cong., 1st sess., February 16, 2007, available at <www.gpo.gov/
fdsys/pkg/BILLS-110s674is/pdf/BILLS-110s674is.pdf>.
36
Congressional Budget Office (CBO), Contractors’ Support of U.S. Operations in
Iraq (Washington, DC: CBO, August 2008), 17, available at <www.cbo.gov/sites/default/
files/110th-congress-2007-2008/reports/08-12-iraqcontractors.pdf>.
37
H. Howe, “Private Security Forces and African Stability: The Case of Executive
Outcomes,” Journal of Modern African Studies 34, no. 2 (1998); S. Mallaby, “New Role for
Mercenaries,” Los Angeles Times, August 3, 2001; S. Mallaby, “Paid to Make Peace Merce-
naries Are No Altruists, but They Can Do Good,” Washington Post, Monday June 4, 2001.
38
Steven L. Sayers et al., “Family Problems among Recently Returned Military
Veterans Referred for a Mental Health Evaluation,” Journal of Clinical Psychiatry 70, no. 2
(2009), 163; Steven Stack, “Suicide: A 15-Year Review of the Sociological Literature Part II:
Modernization and Social Integration Perspectives,” Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior
30, no. 2 (2000), 163–176; and Amy D. Marshall, Jillian Panuzio, and Casey T. Taft, “Inti-
mate Partner Violence Among Military Veterans and Active Duty Servicemen,” Clinical
Psychology Review 25, no. 7 (2005), 862–876.
39
For more information on how ISO 18788 was linked to ANSI/ASIS PSC.1-2012,
see Leigh A. McGuire, “ISO Publishes Security Operations Management System Standard
Based on ANSI/ASIS PSC.1:2012,” ASIS International, September 24, 2015, available
at <https://globenewswire.com/news-release/2015/09/24/770841/10150527/en/ISO-
Publishes-Security-Operations-Management-System-Standard-based-on-ANSI-ASIS-
PSC-1-2012.html>.
40
For background on how the PSC.1-2012 standard evolved into the ISO 18788
standard, see Erik Daniel Erikson, “Meeting ISO 18788 Criteria,” International Foun-
dation for Protection Officers (2015), available at <www.ifpo.org/wp-content/up-
loads/2018/06/18788_EDE_article.doc>.
41
Sidney B. Fay, “The Beginnings of the Standing Army in Prussia,” The American
Historical Review 22, no. 4 (July 1917), 767.

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 McFate

42
For those curious about the Italian Wars, a good place to start is historian Michael
Mallett.
43
Thomas Erskine Holland, The Elements of Jurisprudence, 9th ed. (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1900), 369.

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About the Author

Dr. Sean McFate is a Professor of Strategy in the College of International Se-
curity Affairs at the National Defense University. He is also on faculty at George-
town University’s School of Foreign Service. Recently, he was a Visiting Scholar
at the University of Oxford’s Changing Character of War program. He was also a
think tank scholar at the RAND Corporation, Atlantic Council, Bipartisan Policy
Center, and New America Foundation.
Dr. McFate’s career began as a paratrooper in the U.S. Army’s storied 82nd
Airborne Division. After this, he became a private military contractor in Africa,
where he dealt with warlords, raised small armies, worked with armed groups in
the Sahara, transacted arms deals in Eastern Europe, and helped prevent a geno-
cide in the Great Lakes region. Dr. McFate co-wrote the novels Shadow War and
Deep Black (William Morrow), which are based on his military experiences. He
also authored the non-fiction book The Modern Mercenary (Oxford University
Press). He has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington
Post, and The Economist, and on MSNBC, Fox News, NPR, the BBC, Vice/HBO,
the Discovery Channel, American Heroes Channel, and other media outlets.
Dr. McFate holds a BA from Brown University, an MPP from the Harvard
Kennedy School of Government, and a Ph.D. in International Relations from the
London School of Economics and Political Science. He lives in Washington, DC.
His newest book is titled The New Rules of War: Victory in the Age of Durable
Disorder (William Morrow, 2019).

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Mercenaries and War:
Understanding Private
Armies Today
Sean McFate