A NICE Private Army

The problem is, even hippies disagree with each other on a lot of things, namely how far do they want to take their beliefs, what's evil, what's ok, etc. Just imagine giving PETA guns, and then setting them to clash against rastafarians, and you'll quickly start to see the cracks emerge.

Things like Saving the Whales (with stealth attack subs), Preserving the Rainforest (with Guerilla Commandos) or Fight Against (insert cause here) with Your Private Army!

Because, of course, the best way to deal with deforestation is to send in high-tech commandos to massacre underpaid migrant workers.

Are you high?

I thought we were talking about a nice private army?

When you start assassinating people, the army is no longer nice. People who commit genocide are acceptable targets, shady CFO's are not.

A nice PMC has to be purely defensive in nature. It's there to protect things, even Blackwater and other firms aren't allowed to conduct offensive operations, they just get the interpretation of defensive operations stretched a lot as it is.

edited 21st Sep '12 11:24:27 AM by Barkey

As always, advocating real-world violence as a solution to problems is unacceptable on this wiki.

Well we are talking about a theoretical private army Fighteer, I don't see how discussing theoretical violence is the problem. A private army behaving immorally however is inverse to the topic at hand.

Well, armies are supposed to kill, destory and do many other not nice things.

But I believe that even when you are shooting people, bombing them, waterboarding them, there can still be Niceness.

I'm just not sure HOW it can be Nice.

The only thing that came to mind was the Rwanda thing. An air dropped invasion force of few batalions of soldiers and machine guns could probably have conquered enough territory to create a safe zone and evacuate the women children or some such before the Genocide got really bloody.

But an operation like that would cost a LOT of money (cargo plane full of soldiers in, women and children out, bullets, bribes, etc.) and I doubt any government would bother.

Can't post On Topic anymore. Bark.

edited 21st Sep '12 11:57:45 AM by Natasel

While I despise the creator of Blackwater, Erik Prince(for his own personal beliefs, not his organization. That is a separate issue for me) he had really high hopes about the idea of going into Rwanda and just wiping the floor with those guys.

Honestly, I think that's going to be a real future for PMC's. Going into African countries where there is no legitimate governing body and wiping the floor with those militias would be a good cause for either a PMC or an actual recognized military.

What about reconstruction efforts? Is there any private equivalent to the Army Corps of Engineers? Drop in, build bridges, keep assholes from blowing them up?

Honestly, I think that's going to be a real future for PMC's. Going into African countries where there is no legitimate governing body and wiping the floor with those militias would be a good cause for either a PMC or an actual recognized military.

Colonialism 2.0, huh? Yeah, I can see that ending well.

Historically, civilisation at gunpoint hasn't worked out too often.

Though it's just a video game, the company that the main characters in Resonance of Fate run is shown in a positive light and is specifically called a PMC.

Not that it means much.

The peace corps does the building part in a lot of ways, but they don't tend to have protection.

Mercenaries are a mixed bag. They can do some good things. Or they can be horrid like Black Water was.

Mercenaries have a varied and odd history especially in regards to national armies and large scale conflicts.

Mercs used to guard people building bridges, doing engineering, protecting small out posts and the like are fine. When we start using them to actively replace military assets in general I have a problem.

An advantage and a downside of mercs is they are often not considered part of any one nation. So say we are interested in protecting parts of Georgia from Russian backed insurgents but sending in a fully supplied U.S. group not only stirs up a lot of trouble but requries quite a bit of effor to get out there and maintain there presence. We can hire a merc group and have them train locals as well egage in tactical operations.

The problem is regulating and keeping the mercs under control and ensuring they behave themselves.

If you're referring to the EO guys (interestingly enough, Cobus Claasens is actually mentioned in the Sierra Leone section of EO: Against All Odds), I did read that the Angolan government furnished them with a couple of helos back in the day. It was policy to never carry their own weapons and only use what was given to them by the host government.

The average cost to train an infantryman varies between $40,000 and $120,000 depending on where you look on the internet and this does not include the cost of equipment, transportation to combat zone, pay that is competitive with the private sector, additional training courses like urban and jungle warfare, legal fees from trying to justify breaking international law against the use of mercenaries, multiplied by time in-theatre that would be required to gain combat experience. There are a whole host of other factors I'm sure I don't know. Basically, there's no point and that money would likely be better spent employing more aid workers.

edited 21st Sep '12 5:43:45 PM by HouraiRabbit

Yeah, I meant more in an official capacity of owning and maintaining them on their own.

Probably not affordable in 2012 dollars, sadly.

It's hard to find A- someone who is willing to pay for their own army, B- someone who CAN pay for their own army and C- someone who has a REASON to hire a army instead of just making their own security squad or some such. Maybe If bill gates decided it's be a good strategy to send in some guys to wipe out child slavery and such, but that's unlikely.

Eh, my opinion is that armies should not operate for profit. War ought to be a regrettable necessity rather than a business opportunity. There will never be a "nice" private army because the whole concept of a private army is not nice to begin with.

@Barkey: Notice how the "good" private armies you talk about staff their ranks with former members of national armies,which strive mightily to instill their troops with values like honor and dignity...values which do not bow to the bottom line, last I checked.

As a society, let's not go there. It is tempting to want our wars to be carried out by for-profit mercenaries - after all, they are getting paid to risk dying, bully for them - but what keeps war vaguely civilized are virtues which exist outside of profit.

Yes, its terrible for a nation to occasionally ask its young to die in the furtherance of national policy. But I'd say its worse for a nation to turn the terrible reality of war into a fucking business venture.

Keep war terrible, keep it expensive, keep it profitless, and keep it ugly. That's the way it ought to be.

I loved Shadow Company. A friend of my boyfriend lost her father. He was a merc: helicopter flyer. It was very surreal. At least soliders get flags and salutes, as do cops and fire fighters.

There are nice military options that don't intell full armies, such as commercial hostage rescue teams. Hell, George Clooney funded months of 24 hour independent satillite survalience on the border of North and South Sudan to ensure a peaceful seperation.

Well, while a private army can hypothetically be nice and some real world PM Cs aren't particularly evil, the issue is several and it's not just the level of equipment that a PMC can bring to the table

a) Why is someone using a PMC instead of local authorities? Any place with actual authority then it's not going to be for great reasons. So you'll necessarily need to hire not-so-nice private troops.

b) If you need that much firepower the venture becomes unprofitable, so very rarely would you have super well armed PM Cs versus bodyguard-level of PM Cs.

c) Governments, like the US government, will do its best to hire well mannered PM Cs. But does that really make sense when they can use government troops? So, there's an obvious political problem going on that is forcing the US gov to hire PM Cs rather than salaried national troops.

d) On the other hand, governments that can pass budgets but not war legislation will turn to PM Cs. If a conflict is unpopular, it's probably not a nice one to begin with. So hiring nice PM Cs for it would be counter intuitive.

So really you end up with only small blips of good PM Cs whenever someone like the US goes to war and for some political reason can't send in more normal troops and hires mercs.

As for the idea of using PM Cs to solving problems around Africa, who is going to pay the bills? The UN would rather go with professional peacekeepers (versus donated soldiers) before going with PM Cs, although I do sense that PM Cs might get used because veto powers won't want a professional peacekeeping force.

edited 21st Sep '12 9:38:02 PM by breadloaf

That's why you very rarely see a PMC in a country that has solid rule of law. There's no need for the there. That's why most of them are in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Africa, and some in east asia.

I don't know much about the modern military, but the Achmemid Empire hired the Greek mercenaries for their civil war (that's why we got Xenophon) because they were known to be better than the Persian soldiers, so I would imagine something similar to happening the modern world under similar circumstances.

Though probably there's nothing to guarantee them to be "nice". The Greek mercenaries had a sense of honor and that was before the days of capitalism.

Modern countries have a bigger budget than the ancient Greeks. It's extremely rare for mercenaries to be better-quality soldiers - usually, they're just a cheap way to fill in the gaps.

Actually, the irony is that back then the Persians were far richer than the Greeks: hence why they could afford to hire the Greeks. And they were rich enough to use their wealth to influence Greece since their failure to subjugate them via warfare.

Interestingly enough even Alexander the Great had fought against Greek mercenaries during his conquest of the Achaemenid Empire.

edited 24th Sep '12 2:57:43 AM by IraTheSquire

A NICE Private Navy? PM Cs on the high seas (probably not the right term but it rhymes nicely) are making a real dent in Somali piracy, apparently.