Abstract
The private military and security contractors (PMSCs) are often described as the profit-seeking mercenaries. More specifically the commentators usually make no distinction between the traditional ‘soldiers of fortune’ such as corsairs, pirates, privateers, mercenaries or marauders and the twenty-first-century contractors. However, in this chapter I aim to challenge such simplified historical analogies by focusing on the different ideological and organisational dynamics of PMSCs and their pre-modern mercenary counterparts. I aim to show that unlike mercenaries who had no sense of loyalty to any nation, the employees of PMSCs were born and raised in the nation-centric environments and as such are inevitably ideologically and organisationally wedded to the nationalist realities of modern life. The chapter explores how private military contractors manage and negotiate the organisational aims of profit maximisation with the often-conflicting ideological goals set by national governments and the wider public.
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Notes
- 1.
In some cases PMSCs were led by individuals who either acted in unison with their nation’s secret services or pursued their own nationalist and profit-making ambitions. For example, Frenchman Bob Denard whose private forces fought in Congo, Angola, Gabon and Zimbabwe was a fierce French nationalist who was eager to support the ideal of Françafrique—France’s sphere of influence in its former African colonies and who worked closely with the French intelligence. Other well-known 1960s private contractors such as former British officer Mike Hoare and Belgian Jean Schramme were also staunch nationalists (Weinberg 1995).
- 2.
According to Singer (2008: 103), 70% of Executive Outcomes were black Africans including Namibians, Angolans and South Africans who previously fought alongside SADF in the border wars.
- 3.
According to the Protocol Additional GC 1977 (APGC77) of Geneva convention, mercenaries do not possess the rights associated with the regular soldiers such as to be lawful combatant, or to have a status of prisoner of war meaning that if captured they are likely to be treated as common criminals.
- 4.
Although Singer differentiates sharply between contemporary national militaries and PMSCs, the evidence points that these two models of coercive organisation have great deal in common.
- 5.
- 6.
After this period China experienced population decline until 1193 when during Southern Song Dynasty, the population grew to 76.81 million (Chang-Qun et al. 1998).
- 7.
For example, the personnel of the large PMSCs such as MPRI consists of 95% of former US Army members (Singer 2008: 120).
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Malešević, S. (2019). From Mercenaries to Private Patriots: Nationalism and the Private Military Contractors. In: Swed, O., Crosbie, T. (eds) The Sociology of Privatized Security. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98222-9_3
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