Private Warriors

The absence of relevant international law places emphasis on domestic legislation covering mercenary activity. Such laws exist, but are largely ignored. In the US, the Neutrality Act of 1794 made it a misdemeanour for an individual to prepare or depart for a conflict abroad. A new Neutrality Act was introduced in 1937, but is interpreted as only prohibiting the recruitment of mercenaries within the US - being a mercenary is not in itself a criminal offence. The US position would appear to be that mercenary activity is not a crime under international law, and that mercenaries should be granted the same status and protection as other combatants. Australia's approach is similar: under the Australian Crimes (Foreign Incursions and Recruitment) Act of 1978, it is an offence to recruit mercenaries within Australia, but enlisting them abroad is not prohibited. The UK's Foreign Enlistment Act, 1870 - applicable to international as well as intra-state conflicts - makes enlisting or engaging mercenaries both within and outside the UK an offence. Nevertheless, former British military personnel have a long history of fighting in the wars of other nations. The 'Diplock Report' of 1976 noted that no prosecutions had been brought in the loo years since the Foreign Enlistment Act was promulgated, and recommended that, while recruiting mercenaries within the UK should be prohibited, mercenary activity itself should not be criminalised.

Western countries have thus either not acted on their legislation, or have not introduced adequate laws to curtail mercenary activity. Veteran mercenary Bob Denard received only a five-year suspended sentence from a French court in 1993 for his part in the failed coup in Benin in 1977 that left seven people dead." The 11 states that have ratified the international convention include Angola, Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo, all of which have employed either mercenaries or military companies since the convention was framed.

Both personnel employed by military companies and mercenaries have military origins, are foreign to the country in which they operate and are paid for their services. Beyond these shared characteristics, there are observable differences. Unlike a mercenary, a military company advertises its services and is legally registered (often in an offshore tax haven). Personnel are employed within a defined structure, with established terms and conditions, and work with a degree of organisation and accountability to the company. The company, in turn, is answerable to its client, often under a legally binding contract.

Recruiting foreign soldiers of the 1960s mould has been a more covert and impromptu operation, resulting in a collection of individuals rather than a corporate entity. At best, the level of organisation employed resembles a 'network' or recruitment agency. Recruits are often poorly disciplined, yet, despite the divergence of style from a military company, both may draw from the same labour pool to fill vacancies.

The mercenaries employed by Mobutu in what was then Zaire in early 1997 highlight these operational distinctions. Zairean middle-men were recruiting via veteran operators such as Denard and Belgian-born Christian Tavernier. Faced with a disintegrating Zairean Army and hampered by disparate military experience, the resultant international force lacked cohesion and met with little success. Respected Zairean commander General Mahele Bokongu called its performance 'militarily incompetent and lacking professionalism'.

This ad hoc pattern has become an increasing feature of civil wars. A similar mercenary network recruited soldiers to fight against Russian forces in the Chechen conflict of 1994-96. During the 1992-95 Yugoslav civil war, the Bosnian Serb army attracted troops from Greece, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and the Yugoslav National Army. Bosnian Muslim forces included Middle Eastern Islamists, many of whom were veterans of the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

The assumption that military companies merely comprise modern-day mercenaries is simplistic. Legal definitions established in the wake of mercenary activity in the 1960s cannot be usefully applied to the type of military company emerging in the 1990s, while operational distinctions further distinguish the military company from the mercenary. When a country's vital interests are threatened, the need for outside help outweighs the uncertain moral arguments against it. Whether a military company is classified as a mercenary force matters to prospective clients only in as much as it threatens to attract international opprobrium. Despite public misgivings over their use, Western governments have taken few steps to curtail the activities of military companies.

The expansion of the private military sector since the end of the Cold War stems partly from Western military-force reductions. The US armed forces employ one-third fewer personnel than at their Cold War peak, while the British Army's current head count, at 112,000, is the lowest since the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. Total French armed forces numbered 381,000 in 1997, against 547,000 ten years earlier. Demobilisation has released former soldiers on to the job market, while indirectly the contraction of a state's armed forces has narrowed opportunities for promotion and advancement and encouraged others to leave. The net result is a sharp increase in expertise in the private sector.

In the years between 1989 and 1994, the big-three American automobile companies (with combined annual sales of well over two hundred billion dollars) contributed about two million dollars to congressional-election campaigns. The ten largest American gas and oil companies, with an even greater chunk of the nation’s gross domestic product, gave contributions totaling seven million dollars. The nation’s trial lawyers, meanwhile, contributed nearly thirty-one million dollars.

It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure out that vast economic self-interest must be at stake here. After all, as Charles Keating—formerly head of a major savings and loan bank and now in a federal prison—reportedly said when asked if his contributions to congressional PACs had bought him influence, “I certainly hope so.”

The American legal system is uniquely well designed to benefit lawyers, which is why they want to keep it as it is. We have the “American rule,” where each side pays its own legal costs regardless of outcome. Almost everywhere else the loser pays, so only strong cases are initiated. Punitive damages—in effect a civil fine, but one paid to the plaintiff (and his lawyers) instead of the public treasury—are rare elsewhere. So are contingency fees. All of this, of course, is great for the legal profession and goes a long way toward explaining why this country has more lawyers—and more lawsuits—than any other.

But the lawyers have a problem in promoting the status quo. It is one of the peculiarities of democracy, it seems, that one cannot straightforwardly admit self-interest when seeking to influence legislation. Instead, self-interest, however obvious, must always be cloaked in the mantle of the public good, however specious. My personal favorite example of this took place in 1970, when cable television first was coming to New York City. Owners of the city’s movie theaters, horrified by the threat of having to compete with cable, went on a one-day strike and each theater emblazoned its marquee with the slogan “Save Free TV.”

One of the trial lawyers’ main arguments for the status quo, therefore, is that the vast number of lawsuits from which they profit perform a vital public service, forcing doctors, manufacturers, and others to be more careful than they otherwise might. They argue that many malpractice suits make for less malpractice, that product liability suits produce safer products. Private lawsuits, the lawyers maintain, police the public marketplace by going after bad guys, so the government doesn’t have to.

This is an assertion that would be difficult to demonstrate, to say the least. But it is also a very curious one when you consider that most of that thirty-one million dollars in political contributions went to stalwart advocates of big government. Policing the marketplace, after all, has long been considered a quintessential function of government (not the private sector), in the same category as maintaining national defense and domestic tranquility.

The reason is simple enough. When these matters have been in private hands, self-interest and the public interest inevitably conflicted. The private armies of the Middle Ages all too often turned into bands of brigands or rebels. In this century, during the rise of the labor movement, private police forces were often hard to distinguish from goon squads.

Irishmen continued to serve the French as well as every other country that opposed England. Wild Geese advanced in rank in the regular armies of other countries. Irishman George Brown achieved the rank of marshal while eleven of his countrymen advanced to the rank of general in the Austrian army. Another Irishman, Francis Maurice Lacy, earned the rank of field marshal in the army of the Russian czar. Nineteenth-century poet Emily Lawless later characterized these wandering soldiers of fortune as "Fighters in every clime - Every cause but their own."

The first significant group of Irish mercenaries to arrive in North America joined Louis Montcalm and his French army to oppose the British in the French and Indian War. Part of the Irish Brigade, containing many descendants of the original Wild Geese, fought with Montcalm in their unsuccessful defense of Quebec in September 1759.

While the Irish mercenaries assisted France against the British and their allied American colonists in the French and Indian War, they readily joined the Americans when they rebelled against the British. Irishmen served at every level in the newly formed U.S. Army, Navy, and Marine Corps. Some served to earn citizenship in the new country; others continued their forefathers' tradition of fighting the English wherever and whenever, and still others fought for the small wages in the newly formed American military.

A relative, albeit temporary, peace did not readily provide employment opportunities for the German regiments, but a developing revolution in North America soon did. When the American colonists made a stand against the British at the Battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775, the English thought their army in North America would quickly quell the rebellion. A shocking battle that killed 226 British soldiers, including many officers, and wounded an additional eight hundred troops at Boston's Bunker Hill on June 16 convinced King George that he would need more help to end the uprising.

King George initially turned to his old ally, the queen of Russia. Catherine the Great considered renting her army to Britain, but finally suggested that the English might do better to attempt a peaceful settlement and sent an official reply turning down King George's request to employ her soldiers.

Catherine's formal note also expressed her reservations at using mercenaries to fight the wars of other monarchs. She wrote, "I am just beginning to enjoy peace and Your Majesty knows that my empire has need of repose. There is an impropriety in employing so considerable a body in another hemisphere, under a power almost unknown to it and almost removed in contact with its sovereign. Moreover, I should not be able to prevent myself from reflecting on the consequences which would result for our digniry, for that of the two monarchies and the two nations, from this junction of our forces, simply to calm a rebellion which is not supported by any foreign power."

Catherine's morally superior message omitted the true reason for her refusal – lack of economic necessity. At the time, her majesty and her country were financially well off and, all rhetoric aside, she simply did not need the income produced by risking a good part of her army in foreign combat halfway around the world.

While Catherine might not have needed English gold, other monarchs in Europe were more receptive to the idea. Many German states had veteran regiments sitting idle and costing their princes maintenance money. The German princes in charge of their states needed additional revenue to finance their excesses. One reportedly was charged with the care of seventy-four children and desperately needed new sources of income to maintain his lifestyle.

The soldiers themselves, while considered mercenaries because their services were being paid for and they were fighting for a cause that was not theirs, received little of George's sterling. Their pay was minimal, barely exceeding the cost of their food and supplies. Also, as an organized army with permanent officers, they generally were not permitted to participate in the looting and pillaging usually considered a privilege of soldiers of fortune.

During the extended American Revolution, seventeen Irishmen rose to the level of general or admiral in service to the United States. John Barry, born in County Wexford, Ireland, in 1745, rose from cabin boy to admiral in the U.S. Navy and commanded the frigate Alliance against the British fleet in the Revolution's last naval battle.

In addition to individuals who joined the Revolution, regiments of the Irish Brigade still in the employment of France arrived in America to fight the English. The Dillon Regiment, led by its namesake Col. Arthur Dillon, initially sailed to the West Indies to defend French possessions there. In the fall of 1779 about fifteen hundred Irish members of the Dillon Regiment joined other French and American units in the unsuccessful attack against the British at Savannah, Georgia. The Dillon Regiment, reinforced by the Walsh and Berwick Regiments of the Irish Brigade, later assisted in continued French operations against the British in the West Indies.

While many Irish immigrants remained in the United States after the War of Independence, the Irish Brigade regiments returned to France. After nearly a century of faithful service to the crown, they were finally disbanded when the French successfully concluded their own revolution in 1792.

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