Mercenaries, Hybrid Armies and National Security

Private Soldiers and the State in the 21st Century

Caroline Varin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317674771
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Nationale Sicherheit

This book assesses the use of 'mercenaries' by states, and their integration into the national armed forces as part of a new hybridisation trend of contemporary armies.

Governments, especially in the West, are undertaking an unprecedented wave of demilitarisation and military budget cuts. Simultaneously, these same governments are increasingly opening their armies up to foreign nationals and outsourcing military operations to private companies. This book explores the impact of this hybridisation on the values, cohesion and effectiveness of the armed forces by comparing and contrasting the experiences of the French Foreign Legion, private military companies in Angola, and the merging of private contractors and American troops in Iraq.

Examining the employment of foreign citizens and private security companies as military forces and tools of foreign policy, and their subsequent impact on the national armed forces, the book investigates whether the difficulties of coordinating soldiers of various nationalities and allegiances within public-private joint military operations undermines the legitimacy of the state. Furthermore, the author questions whether this trend for outsourcing security can realistically provide a long term and positive contribution to national security.

This book will be of much interest to students of private military companies, strategic studies, international security and IR in general.

1 Introduction

The presence of foreign nationals and private contractors in contemporary armies has been increasing over the past two decades. Yet, the professional citizen-soldier has been the symbol of nationhood and state control, representing a society’s cultural values and political ambitions for the past 200 years. The recent trend of states shifting towards a more open model, including foreign and private actors into the military body, has forced a hybridisation of the armed forces where soldiers are required to adapt, with more or less success, to this non-state agent. The composition of the national armed forces in the twenty-first century is going to continue to include more foreigners, contractors and soldiers, working side by side to further the interests of the state.

While this phenomenon has already gained much academic and political interest, it is worth adding to the literature with a new comparative and historic study of the hybridisation of the armed forces and its impact on national security. In particular, including new actors into the army is challenging the status quo of the military institution, an organisation that is traditionally rigid to change, relatively homogeneous, and with a set modus operandi. This book therefore asks three main questions:

1 What are the differences, if any, in the ability of foreigners, private contractors and citizen-soldiers to guarantee the internal security of the state and successfully carry out its foreign policy?

2 What happens to an army of citizen-soldiers when it is forced to work side by side with private, sometimes foreign companies?

3 In the long run, can the hybridisation of the armed forces actually improve, or does it impede, the security of the state, and what efforts are being made to facilitate this transition?

This is a particularly important topic in view of the increasing number of flailing states where weak leaders are outsourcing their security needs to foreign and private actors in order to prop up their own regimes. In the last twenty years, the governments of Papua New Guinea, Angola, Liberia and Sierra Leone have all turned to foreign private military companies to train their armies and supplement their troops against rebel insurgencies. In 2004 and again in 2011, former President Laurent Gbagbo called upon Liberian mercenaries to preserve his rule in Côte d’Ivoire. Similarly, former Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi recruited between 5,000 and 10,000 principally Touareg mercenaries from Mali, Niger, Chad and Algeria to quell local uprisings that challenged his right to rule, to no avail. Western states, following unprecedented budget cuts to the armed forces, are also outsourcing their military capabilities to foreigners and private contractors in the Middle East and in resource-rich African countries where they have significant investments. Even China has begun to use private security companies “staffed with ‘retired’ members of China’s security forces” (FT 2/2/2012) to provide security to its commercial operations in conflict zones, notably in the Sudan and other African countries.

Considering this trend and its lack (but not total absence) of historic precedent, it is important to regularly reassess the viability to the model, taking into account similar cases where armies have had to adapt, for better or for worse, to new roles, security threats and combatants. This work, therefore, specifically addresses the question of how the hybridisation of the armed forces has affected national security in an increasingly integrated and competitive political environment.

Defining combatants

Defining the differences between types of combatants is challenging, as these actors vary both from state to state and from each other. There is no consensus as to a definition of ‘mercenary’ or ‘soldier’, although both combatants have been used extensively throughout history, from the Greeks who were notorious as the best mercenaries of their epoch¹ to the Napoleonic armies of supposedly citizen-soldiers. It is possible to differentiate at least three types of combatants for our purposes: ‘citizen’ soldiers, pooled from the nation’s citizenry and with a vested interest in the security of their own state; foreign soldiers, such as the Gurkha Regiments and the French Foreign Legion who are incorporated into the armed forces but often remain marginal actors under the strict supervision of national officers; and private contractors, sometimes amalgamated with ‘mercenaries’, who are external to the military institution of the state but can be contracted by anyone to participate in a conflict.

Each of these groups differs in motivation, goals and organisational structure. They have also been more or less welcome as providers of security in the development of the nation-state. For example, there are both national and international laws that forbid the recruitment of foreigners into the armed forces, and likewise, make it illegal for nationals to enrol in foreign armies. In the Middle Ages, however, professional mercenaries were perceived as more trustworthy combatants than serfs. As norms change, so do the combatants in warfare.

Using the term ‘mercenary’ to designate non-state combatants has also become politically charged and heavily contested, not least by academics. Peter Singer distinguishes mercenaries by their foreignness to the conflict, their independence from the national force and the limitations of the contractual ties, their short-term economic motivations, the method of recruitment and organisation and the nature of their services. Janice Thomson defines mercenarism as “the practices of enlisting in and recruiting for a foreign army” (Thomson 1994: 27), and entirely leaves out the motive argument on the basis that “individual motives are impossible to determine”. Sarah Percy, on the other hand, focuses exclusively on the financial motives of mercenaries and their lack of personal interest in the conflict: “mercenaries are morally problematic because they cannot provide a plausible justification for killing; they cannot point to a cause in the service of which they fight, aside from financial gain” (Percy 2007: 54). The Italian philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli corroborates this point by defining mercenaries by their lack of motivation in combat: “they have no tie or motive to keep them in the field beyond their paltry pay, in return for which it would be too much to expect them to give their lives”.

Many of these points distinguish mercenaries from soldiers in terms of their relationship vis-à-vis the nation, i.e. their nationality. It is assumed that only citizens have an intrinsic interest in the security of their land, while foreigners have other motivations which can easily fluctuate – hence the classification of these combatants into ‘soldiers’ with an assumed legal and emotional attachment to their country, and ‘non-state warriors’ who are a priori external to the state. The perception that combatants ‘must’ be nationals is a social norm born out of the evolving function of the state and not necessarily a reflection of the actual efficiency and trustworthiness of each combatant.

Violence and social norms

A fundamental element of war, the choice of combatants is susceptible to normative preferences that reflect a society’s acceptance of who can yield violence and how. The European tradition of civic militarism and the definition of the modern state in terms of its monopoly over the legitimate use of violence have influenced contemporary social norms determining the role of mercenaries and soldiers in foreign policy. Alasdair MacIntyre explains that war takes place “within the context of norms which a community shares” and therefore the culture of war changes geographically and historically as norms can vary from place to place. For the past 200 years, on the European continent, citizens have been the preferred combatant, representing the cultural values and choices of the state and society.

Social norms define everything: who can exert violence, who can kill, who can be a soldier, and so forth. Norms are “a set of rules that stipulate the ways states (and people) should cooperate and compete with each other. They prescribe acceptable terms of (state) behaviour and proscribe unacceptable kinds of behaviour” (Mearsheimer 1994). They are important because they represent a society’s ethos and values and subsequently can influence their state’s choices and behaviour. In a comparative study of combatants, the choice of using non-state warriors – also selectively referred to as ‘mercenaries’ in this study – or soldiers in wars is contingent on the social norms that envelop the level of acceptability for each actor.

The actual influence of norms, however, has been keenly debated in international relations. John Mearsheimer argues that norms are “a reflection of the distribution of power in the world. They are based on the self-interested calculation of great powers and they have no independent effect on state behaviour”. They are also created by the state to guide the value system of their citizens and nurture their ideological and political support. This presupposes that the interest of the state actually primes over value systems that in turn can be moulded and changed according to the whims of the state. Norms can be influenced exogenously, however. Significant changes in military technology and in the scale of war have forced armies to adapt in order to survive, regardless of the prescribed norms and preferences of the state and society. Constructivists, on the other hand, argue that norms are an intrinsic part of state identity and therefore determine state behaviour. This explains why states sometimes pursue policies that appear counter-productive to their immediate interests and aspirations. Sarah Percy claims that the constructivist approach is “best suited to explaining the norm against mercenary use (…) given that state interests of the desirability of deploying private force have changed enormously, in ways that cannot always be accounted for by material factors” (Percy 2007: 18).

Norms are perpetually changing to accommodate new innovations and paradigms that “unsettle existing structures of knowledge about the past and its relation to the present” (Coker 2010: 142). Philosopher Thomas Kuhn suggests that paradigm shifts “occur not in the minds of individual innovators, but in particular conjunctures of social and intellectual circumstances which challenge existing structures of knowledge and open up space for new ideas”. War, adds Coker, is especially susceptible to these paradigm shifts because it is itself “the invention of culture”, reflecting a society’s values and identity and its adaptability to changes in its immediate environment. Because “war is anchored to what we imagine or would like it to be, it is in that sense profoundly normative” (ibid.: 144).

The current preference for soldiers and the concomitant condemnation of mercenaries, however, have not been a constant throughout history. Until at least the nineteenth century, states conducted their foreign policies through non-state subsidiaries including mercenaries, mercantile companies and privateers. The normative hostility towards non-state combatants stems from two social norms: one which argues that “mercenaries were antipathetic to the norms of modern community” (Coker 2010: 149) due to the instrumentality of war for social conditioning and the foreign and therefore apolitical nature of mercenaries who are not part of the established community. The second claims that the state must maintain a monopoly over the legitimate use of violence and be capable of holding all military actors accountable (this is further developed in Chapter 7). Mercenaries are foreign, freelance, and therefore very difficult to control, making them undesirable in the eyes of modern society. These norms, it will be shown, were deliberately designed and adapted by the state in its pursuit and consolidation of power and legitimacy.

Research design

This project was born out of a desire to assess the viability of alternative security options in war-torn African countries. Taking security as a necessary premise for development and factoring in the reluctance of certain regimes to reinforce their national security apparatus, can private military providers offer a tangible solution and improve the security in a given state? In order to assess this possibility, it was first necessary to tackle the normative argument that foreign combatants are, if not always a direct security threat, an undesirable agent in contemporary warfare. A thorough review of contemporary and historic case studies further enabled the study to evaluate the risks of hybridisation, i.e. integrating soldiers with non-traditional warriors in one same force. By investigating trends of hybridisation in similar but not equal situations, it was possible to evaluate the viability of this model and make suggestions for states that choose to develop their military apparatus in this direction.

Chapters 2 and 3 compare and contrast the historical role of soldiers and non-state warriors and evaluate their respective abilities as combatants – the first question that we seek to address in this book. Chapter 2 explores the historical use and value of mercenaries in warfare prior to ‘Classical Modernity’ (Berman 1982). Mercenaries pre-date soldiers, and were used by warlords and sovereigns to pursue their territorial ambitions. The fashion of using mercenaries was challenged by the French Revolution in 1789 and the ensuing rise of nationalism that advocated in favour of citizen-soldiers as the more dependable, desirable and controllable combatant. Motivations, morals and military virtues are explored in this chapter through a collection of interviews, philosophical arguments and battle assessments that reveal that mercenaries are not solely motivated to go to war by the lure of profit, nor do they necessarily make worse combatants than soldiers. Nonetheless, their continued lack of accountability and restraint distinguishes them legally, morally and psychologically from state-warriors, fostering tension and resentment within the ranks when they are forced to work together.

Chapter 3 focuses on the soldier, and presents his rise to prominence as the state’s chosen combatant in the nineteenth century, following France’s Revolutionary Wars and the military reforms of the Prussian Army. The military institution came to represent the values, strength and aspirations of the modern state while civic-militarism, duty and sacrifice were deliberately instilled in the population through massive state propaganda campaigns and through education. Patriotism and nationalism were presented as necessary attributes defining the moral and military value of the soldier who in turn received honour and recognition from his society. Obedience was insured through draconian training inspiring blind obedience, and a system of military courts that punished deviants and discouraged defiance. These measures guaranteed the accountability and performance of the soldier which may not have been ensured otherwise. Through a survey of historic and more recent academic and literary accounts, this chapter contrasts the efficacy in combat of mercenaries, who elect to join a conflict and remain outside of state structures, with that of soldiers, who are bound to and by the state.

The hybridisation of the armed forces is a relatively recent phenomena, with only a few cases to choose from in order to assess its impact on civil–military relations (i.e. the relationship between soldiers and non-state actors). Consequently, it was necessary to delve into like cases where national soldiers have been required to collaborate with foreigners integrated into their ranks. The French Foreign Legion was chosen as the obvious case study, with a rich literary history available in several languages that reflects the difficulties and advantages of merging French soldiers with foreign combatants in the pursuit of French foreign policy. Although legionnaires, like the Gurkha, are not uniformly regarded as mercenaries, the individuals participating in combat are foreigners with no obvious emotional attachment to the country for which they are fighting, and are for our intents and purposes categorised as pseudo-mercenaries. Cognisant of this difference, national soldiers, and indeed society as a whole, have regarded legionnaires as marginal and sometimes suspicious agents and have forcibly limited their enrolment in the nation’s armed forces.

Chapter 4 therefore looks at the French Legionnaire as a quintessential example of the merging of military values and mercenary attributes. It traces the military experiment of creating a regiment of foreigners from its difficult start as a funnel for immigrants and undesirables, to its successes and failures in the colonial and post-colonial military campaigns. Despite initial obstacles and national resentment, the Foreign Legion progressively became the striking arm of the French colonial project, and the pride of the French Army with its own international reputation. The chapter also explores the identity and motivations of the men who join as legionnaires and the training and disciplinary system of the Legion, with the aim of understanding the process by which these mercenaries were transformed into respectable and effective ‘soldiers’. As a mercenary unit, the Legion suffers from above average desertion and suicide rates. Its members, all volunteers, have come from extreme backgrounds, ranging from criminals to intellectuals. Despite their differences, legionnaires exhibit unusual group cohesion and loyalty to the Foreign Legion, which has played out on the battlefield to create a fierce and dependable force that carries out its orders, facilitating French foreign policy.

The case study of the French Foreign Legion is particularly useful as i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Content
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Non-state warriors
• 3 Soldiers and national security
• 4 The French Foreign Legion
• 5 Executive Outcomes
• 6 American contractors
• 7 Citizens, soldiers and state control
• 8 Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index