A comment on mercenaries, PMC’s and militias:

Mercenaries have their uses and what constitutes a “ Merc” depends on the definition you care to use. John Keegan has pointed out that our professional soldiers are technically speaking, mercenaries. So is the Foreign Legion. So were the British Army Ghurkas. According to the UN’s ridiculously torturous definition of mercenary activity, virtually no one fighting for pay under the color of authority of a state is a “Merc” unless you are “Mad Mike “ Hoare or Colonel Bob Denard.

Frankly, PMC’s with real military capabilities like the old Executive Outcomes are damned useful in the Gap where the dramatically outclass local fighters, be they rebels or state military conscripts. We would get far better results in, say, Darfur, using full-blooded PMC’s against the Janjaweed, under the supervision of Core state military officers than say, by bribing OAU states to send 25,000 ill-trained, poorly equipped
“ Peacekeepers” who will rape, murder and loot. Or Bangladeshis, who though better disciplined, need a huge amount of foreign logistical amd material support.

While I have reviewed Dr. Richards brief that is based on Neither Shall the Sword and found it provocative and intellectually useful for challenging outmoded assumptions, replacing the Defense Department with all-PMC’s or a mix of PMC’s and militia is simply not going to happen for any great power. A small state, like a Gulf Emirate, might find such a policy useful as their militaries are useless for anything beyond maintaining internal order but a great power treads in dangerous waters if it were to try that policy. It is simply a bad idea for all the reasons listed by Machiavelli.

Militias have their uses but lets not go overboard with this concept either. Militiamen are not going to maintain and fly fleets F-16’s, operate attack submarines or be given control over tactical nukes. State militaries are always going to have a place at the table and suggesting otherwise is a preference for an isolationist foreign policy that disregards the stabilizing effects of military security on the global economy. You have to count not only the obvious costs, enormous as they are, of the Leviathan “ Big War” American defense establishment but the expenditures that we do not make because states take the preponderant power of the U.S. into account for their calculations.

Absent that military hegemony of the U.S., the world would have a) far more state vs. state wars and b) the economic costs of interrupted trade.