There is a good piece in The Cipher Brief yesterday on the Russians use of Private Military Companies to augment or replace their special forces in deployed locations like Syria and Ukraine. These are mercenaries, and we would also have to believe their may be some foreign contractors as well in this mix, though none were identified in this article. Pay for play soldiers are very much the same the world over.
The obvious cited advantage is plausible denial. We have no soldiers in that area; we don’t have any idea who shot off those mortars; we promise to assist in any investigation. The Russians have already hired people individually who were captured with “contracts” from their government still in their pockets. Not wanting to be called spies, these people quickly confessed and were hustled off to jail.
There is not much new in this, but mercenaries have some disadvantages. Private military forces have occasionally gone beyond their “mission” and hired themselves out to more than one agency in the same government, sometimes, different governments with similar roles in the same areas. Peter Benicsak’s article hits some of the more obvious drawbacks: the costs are higher; “loose cannon” effects; less transparency and accountability; and, of course, they encourage the same type of contracts from other governments.
Let’s not make too much of this. Most every government has some contractors who are employed to do things the government does not have the expertise to do. Cyber often enters into this equation, so I ran into a few. Experts have their own arrogance and think because they are good at what they do, nobody will ever catch them, but the other side hires the same kinds of people. Like the contract killers I wrote about a couple of days ago, these are specialists who are hunted by other specialists and, like their fictional parallels, the Secretary will disavow them if they are caught. Not a very comfortable way to live. They are always looking over their shoulder, often literally.
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