I would not necassarily agree that “Unemployed soldiers of any kind tend to cause conflict, especially if they don’t have skills needed in peacetime.”

I know a number of ex-SAS that do contract work, return home and they are just like any of us. They are not running around looking for more work, but if a job arises and thier skills suit they may take on the offer.

Like any military or armed resistance, they are there to defend or protect, not solve the issues surrounding a conflict.

That is what politicians get paid for. : )

And it isn’t so much that returning mercenaries may create conflict to maximise income, as you put it. Unemployed soldiers of any kind tend to cause conflict, especially if they don’t have skills needed in peacetime.

Peter

The argument that returning mercenaries may create conflict to maximise income doesn’t, economically, make much sense – they should have been doing that before, anyway, if the argument was correct.

• The government is not within its rights to allow the slaughter of its own citizens. Collateral damage, sure, but apparently the Executive Outcomes campaign in Sierra Leone, while effective, did involve mass civilian casualties. Counter-insurgency should be more subtle and based on regaining popular support. Employing PMCs in a front-line role might prove counterproductive.
• It is prudent to keep the support of your own military, which was the mistake of PNG’s leaders. They risked a military coup because the underfunded army resented the $36 million fee that Sandline charged.

I think that payment with resources was common for EO/Sandline in the 1990s, and probably would have occurred in Bougainville if not for the mutiny. Employing PMCs has definite advantages, but it can risk the loss of popular legitimacy, especially for an already-weak state.

Another danger is state armed forces effectively becoming mercenaries, when they rely for funding on multinational resource companies who pay for security services (West Papua, Nigeria etc).

What I find more worrying, though, is that any individual or group who can afford the fee could hire mercenaries, including rebels, terrorists, criminals, warlords and so on. Not all mercenaries would work for such groups – especially not the large corporations employed by the US – but contractors from poor countries would find it tempting, especially after the demand for their services declines in Iraq.

If an elected government is being threatend by an insurgency (rebels) and the governments military is not strong enough to stand on its own against these rebels isn’t that elected government within its rights to use “mercenaries” to help defend itself and its people?

This has been the case in a number of African countries in the past.

I do however agree there are potential problems, and in some cases the private security company can become more powerful than the government itself.

One such instance occurred in Africa. The government hired a provate military company and could not afford to pay in cash. The government paid the company with rights to the countries natural resources.

Now that is a scary thought!