War...
War never changes.
And along with the unchanging practice of war, comes the way in which it is practiced.
For many nations around the world that means the use of mercenary armies to achieve objectives
that are too expensive, politically sensitive, or secret for them to use regular military
forces for.
Mercenaries instead offer a much cheaper, and more private alternative for a country
looking for a solution for a particularly troublesome problem.
Why would a nation- even a modern one like the US, Britain, or Russia- need mercenaries
though?
Well, for many nations the hiring of mercenary forces is actually cheaper than either having
a standing military of its own, or using its own military forces to do the same job.
Mercenaries typically come with a higher up-front cost than regular military forces might- for
instance, the average US soldier earns around 30k a year, while a mercenary with the same
level of experience could earn as much as $80-100k a year.
In exchange for a higher up-front cost, a nation can avoid all the hidden costs of actually
deploying their own military force, things such as training, transportation, supply,
and possibly even life insurance.
Those costs can add up significantly- for instance the cost per flight hour for operating
a C-17 can be around $20,000, so a twelve hour flight to get two platoons of infantry
to a combat zone can already run a bill of $240,000.
Mercenaries on the other hand are typically responsible for footing their own transportation,
supply, and training costs.
Another big appeal to using mercenary forces over conventional forces though is the plausible
deniability involved in the use of mercenaries.
Mercenaries aren't just paid well to fight well, they are paid well to keep secrets,
and thus mercenaries can often be used to wage conflicts that their host nation doesn't
want it known it is supporting.
This is best exemplified by Russia who routinely uses mercenaries in the Middle East, Africa,
and Ukraine to push its own agenda while being able to deny all involvement.
For countries at war though, mercenaries have another huge appeal: they help avoid war weariness
from the population.
This was a big draw for the US, who turned to using mercenaries in Iraq and Afghanistan
in order to keep the total casualty counts of the wars low on public media.
Mercenary casualties after all are not publicly reported.
Mercenaries also however can act as supplemental forces when needed, once more turning to the
example of the US in its dual wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
As was famously noted by an American general, if the US truly wanted to fight both wars
it would have to institute a national draft, as the US military wasn't big enough to fight
both wars while keeping its national priority of having enough forces available in reserve
to fight a third war against a major power and win.
The US could have called in forces from overseas to its middle east conflicts, but doing so
would have jeopardized its ability to respond to aggression from potential near-peer enemies
such as Russia or China.
Thus, instead of instituting a draft to fill this shortfall, the US took to hiring mercenaries,
and at one point nearly half of all military forces in the region were mercenaries.
Mercenaries have had a long and checkered history, but thanks to the Cold War they were
in serious decline around the world.
With the political situation between the US and the Soviet Union being so sensitive, neither
side could afford a large group of mercenaries causing an irrevocable provocation against
the other side.
Thus mercenary forces during the Cold War remained largely the realm of third and second
world nations fighting internal conflicts or against their neighbors, while the US and
Soviet Union used only smaller mercenary forces in various proxy conflicts.
Thanks to the global war on terror though, the use of mercenary forces has skyrocketed.
With a need for experienced warfighters, and thousands of US and other NATO soldiers being
discharged from their respective militaries after serving their contracts, groups of former
soldiers came together to form powerful mercenary companies.
These companies then simply hired themselves back out to the US and its NATO allies, helping
fill a serious manpower shortfall in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Today mercenaries are in use all over the world, and many are worried that the continued
use of mercenaries will allow nations to do things it wouldn't normally do thanks to public
oversight of its military forces.
Sadly, a new age of mercenaries may be upon us, but who are the biggest players in this
dangerous arena today?
Academi
Academi was originally known as Blackwater, which was and still very much is the most
controversial mercenary agency in the world.
Founded by a former navy SEAL in 1997, Blackwater originally hired itself out as instructors
to help train military and law enforcement organizations.
When the US invaded Afghanistan, Blackwater received its first contract from the US government
to provide physical security to CIA bases involved in the hunt for Osama Bin Laden.
Eventually their contracts grew to include the training of Iraq's new army and police
forces, as well as providing fire support for coalition forces.
Domestically, Blackwater was hired by the US government and several private companies
to protect their installations in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
The company supported search and rescue efforts of stranded civilians by dispatching a rescue
team and a helicopter to assist free of charge.
Overseas though Blackwater quickly grew a reputation for being overly cruel and ruthless
in its military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Numerous claims that Blackwater operatives were either targeting civilians or not working
to limit the collateral damage of their engagements were made, and in 2007 the US government leveled
charges against the company for the actions of its employees in an incident where 14 Iraqi
civilians were killed and another 20 wounded.
Ultimately four Blackwater employees were found guilty and convicted.
One man was sentenced to life in prison, while another three were given thirty year sentences.
Shortly after the Nisour Square massacre, Blackwater began the process of rebranding
itself, eventually becoming Academi.
Today Academi employs not just American mercenaries, but men from all over the world, and is involved
in various ongoing conflicts including the fighting in Yemen.
Defion Internacional
A powerful mercenary company which most people have never heard of, Defion Internacional
has been involved in many of the 21st century's biggest conflicts.
Based in Lima, Peru, the company is best known for its employment of soldiers who come chiefly
from second or third world nations, which allows Defion to pay its mercenaries extremely
low wages.
For instance, while an American mercenary agency may pay tens of thousands of dollars
per contract, Defion created much public furor against it when it was discovered that it
was paying its mercenaries as little as $1,000 a month.
Most of Defion's contracts actually came from the American private military company Triple
Canopy, which outsourced security work within Baghdad's Green Zone to Defion.
Interestingly though, defion Internacional also employs many personnel outside of the
security industry such as food handlers/preparers, English teachers, insurance agents and doctors.
Defion will often support foreign operations by not just providing security forces for
rear areas, but by also providing the cooking and maintenance personnel that keep NATO bases
working in conflict zones.
Triple Canopy
Merging with Academi to form Constellis Group, Triple Canopy was for a long time one of the
most elite private military companies on the planet.
Its founders were former US Army Special Forces veterans, to include a number of Delta force
operators, and their agents specialized in not just providing physical security to facilities
and VIPs, but in consulting with other agencies to help shore up their physical and cyber
defenses.
For the time that it existed, Triple Canopy may have been the most lethal private military
force in the world.
Its operatives were largely recruited from the various US military special forces commands,
to include US Army special forces, Rangers, SEALs, Marine Special Operations Command and
some federal law enforcement agencies.
Professional warfighters at their core, Triple Canopy employees operated under a strict code
of ethics, and in 2007 the company fired two employees for failing to report that their
supervisor had fired on a civilian vehicle while in Iraq.
The supervisor was himself also fired.
Many have seen the merger of former Blackwater agency Academi and Triple Canopy as an attempt
by Academi to repair its seriously tarnished reputation.
Wagner Group
The Wagner Group is perhaps shrouded in more controversy than even former Blackwater security,
and the agency has been outright banned from operating in several nations where NATO holds
political sway.
The true identity of the company is itself a mystery, and foreign policy experts are
unsure if Wagner Group is truly an independent private military firm, or simply a secret
extension of the Russian Ministry of Defense.
What is known is that Wagner Group employees are predominantly Russian, and have taken
part in every conflict that Russia has a political stake in.
The Wagner Group is believed to be founded by a former Russian special forces Lieutenant
Colonel, Dmitry Valeryevich Utkin, serving with Russian's chief intelligence agency,
the GRU.
After his retirement he began working for a Russian private security group which provided
security personnel and training all over the world.
Utkin then joined a detachment of that security group known as the Slavonic Corps, dispatched
to protect Chinese oil company assets and infrastructure in Syria.
A disastrous ambush by ISIS personnel led to the deaths of many Russian mercenaries,
and the Slavonic Corps was disbanded.
Utkin next showed up in Ukraine, fighting on the side of the separatists and under the
banner of The Wagner Group, a name allegedly chosen for Utkin's fondness for the Third
Reich.
Wagner Group employees tend to be former Russian military personnel, though for a short time
it operated a Serbian unit.
Since 2015, The Wagner Group has shown up in conflicts from the war in Ukraine to Syria,
Madagascar, Sudan, and Venezuela to name a few, and always in direct support of Russian
political objectives.
The group may best be remembered however for an attack on an American special forces base
in Syria in February of 2018.
American intelligence confirmed the presence of Wagner Group individuals leading an attack
by Syrian forces on a base held by a platoon's worth of American special forces soldiers
and their Kurdish allies.
US forces held out against a force numbering in the hundreds, killing many and suffering
only a single wounded in return.
After the battle various sources reported that the Wagner Group had suffered anywhere
between 15 to as many as 200 casualties at the hands of the Americans, while the Russian
government denied any knowledge of the incident.
The secrecy surrounding the Wagner Group has made a true count of casualties impossible
to determine, and most troubling, a Russian journalist investigating the issue was found
in critical condition after having fallen from his fifth floor balcony.
He was in a coma for three days before dying due to his injuries.
Russian officials claim the man had committed suicide, yet another three journalists investigating
the actions of the Wagner Group in Africa were ambushed by unknown gunmen and killed.
In August 2019, a former Chechen commander and veteran of the Second Chechen War was
gunned down in Berlin by a Russian man on a bicycle carrying a silenced pistol.
The Russian was apprehended after being spotted throwing a gun and a bicycle into a nearby
river, though his identity could not be confirmed as his travel documents and name given were
all fake.
An investigation by American and German journalists discovered that the man was using a passport
number linked to Russia's Ministry of Internal Affairs, and it is suspected that he too was
a member of The Wagner Group.
Conflict between major powers may be at a historic low, yet while full-scale war seems
less likely than ever, the use of mercenary forces to fight smaller conflicts around the
world is more popular than ever.
This rise in mercenaries has led to many fears of what the use of these rogue military forces
could lead nations to do, and while some firms such as Triple Canopy have solid reputations,
others such as The Wagner Group and former Blackwater have proven that they care little
for international laws.
While conventional military forces can be kept accountable by the public, the actions
of mercenaries often go unreported, and reporting on them can sadly sometimes be dangerous as
Russian reporters have often found.
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