The Modern Mercenary: Private Armies and What They Mean for World Order Read Online Free PDF

member. The best way to comprehend the contours of the industry is in terms of the United States’ own military. The United States birthed this industry for its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and, unsurprisingly, the industry mirrored the client’s own army. PMC leadership, culture, and operational concepts are all derivative of the US military, which is very appealing to the client.
    However, this raises disconcerting questions about the relationship between client and companies. Are the bonds between the United States and the private military industry too close? Do conflicts of interest exist? Does this relationship ultimately extend or limit American power? When the United States invaded Iraq, few imagined at the time that it would also introduce a new norm in modern warfare: the privatization of war. The next chapter explores the deepening dependency between the superpower and the private military industry and implications for the American way of war.

4

How Did We Get Here?
    And history with all her volumes vast, Hath but one page.
    —Lord Byron,
Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
,
Canto IV (1818), Stanza 108
    It is a familiar story. A superpower goes to war and faces a stronger-than-expected insurgency in distant lands yet has insufficient forces to counter it because of political and military constraints. The superpower decides to hire contractors, some of whom are armed, to support its war effort. The armed contractors prove to be both a blessing and a curse, providing vital security services to the campaign yet at times killing innocent civilians in their zeal, causing strategic setbacks and damaging the superpower’s legitimacy. Without these contractors, it would be hard for the superpower to wage war, but with them, it is difficult to win.
    The armed contractors in question are not in Iraq or Afghanistan but in northern Italy, and the year is not 2007 but 1377. The superpower in question is not the United States but the papacy under Pope Gregory XI, who was fighting the antipapal league led by the duchy of Milan. 1 The tragic killing of civilians by armed contractors did not occur in Baghdad but in Cesena, 630 years earlier. The military companies employed were not DynCorp International, Triple Canopy, or Blackwater but the Company of the Star, the Company of the Hat, and the White Company. Known as free companies, these for-profit warriors were organized as corporations, with a well-articulated hierarchy of subcommanders and administrative machinery that oversaw the fair distribution of loot according to employees’ contracts. CEO-like captains led these medieval PMCs.
    One of the most famous mercenary captains was Englishman Sir John Hawkwood, who led the transalpine White Company. He achieved international celebrity on the battlefield, earning fame and fortune. He served as England’s ambassador to the Roman court, received angry letters from Saint Catherine of Siena, and joined English writer Geoffrey Chaucer, Flemish chronicler Jean Froissart, and Italian humanist Francesco Petrarch at a lavish wedding feast for King Edward III’s son. 2
    Contemporaries admired and reviled him. According to fourteenth-century Italian storyteller Franco Sacchetti, two Franciscan monks encountered Hawkwood near his fortress at Montecchio. The monks greeted him with the standard salutation, “May God grant you peace.” Hawkwood coldly replied, “And may God take away your alms.” Shocked by this rudeness, the monks demanded an explanation. “Don’t you know that I live by war,” Hawkwood answered, “and peace would destroy me? And as I live by war so you live by alms.” Sacchetti adds: “And so, he managed his affairs so well that there was little peace in Italy in his times.” 3
    The parallels between earlier and modern PMCs are strong. Today the United States and other countries employ contractors to fulfill security-related contracts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. In the late Middle Ages, such men were