The return of private military force

The development of warfare and armed conflict since the Second World War has seen a gradual return of the use of private military force. Armed force organized and deployed by non-state private companies or mercenaries usually, though not always, acting in the service of states has, until recently, involved small-scale conflicts predominantly located in the global South. The first manifestation of this was shortly after the Second World War, particularly in Africa. In an international context generally supportive of colonial independence the direct repression of struggles against colonialism was widespread but unpopular. The use of mercenaries enabled elements within former colonial powers to deny direct involvement in repression while in the shadows agents recruited ‘newly discharged soldiers from the metropolitan states to crush, sabotage, frustrate or delay the aspirations for self-determination’ (Musah and Fayemi, 1999: 20; see also Miller, 2020). This use of mercenaries came to a head in the mid-1970s in the anti-colonial struggle and civil war in Angola. Mercenary intervention was a disaster and the majority were captured and tried, given long prison sentences or executed (Wrigley, 1999). The United Nations (UN) banned mercenaries in 1995 but increasingly tolerates and indeed makes use of what are now known as private military companies (PMCs).

The transition from mercenaries to PMCs was partly a change in nomenclature and, crucially, a change in legitimacy. Whereas the term mercenary had come to connote illegal armed force deployed for dubious purpose, PMCs were increasingly employed by governments or international organizations, including the UN, as necessary and legitimate components of military missions. The role of the private company Executive Outcomes during the civil war in Sierra Leone during the 1990s is often seen as a key factor in the transition to legitimacy. The company was initially regarded by the UN as a disruptive mercenary force but subsequently came to be seen as an agent of stability and support for the legitimate government (see Fitzgibbon and Lea, 2020: 55ff).

The widespread employment of large PMCs such as Blackwater, DynCorp and Aegis by the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan in the early 2000s illustrated another element of the move away from the mercenary model.