Free The Modern Mercenary: Private Armies and What They Mean for World Order by Sean McFate Page A

innovative or efficient as business in operations, as companies keep costs down out of existential necessity.
    The cost saving of private armies is confirmed in modern times. Examining the cost-effectiveness of PMCs in Iraq, the US Congressional Budget Office (CBO), an official government agency charged with reviewing congressional budget issues, found private military contractors to be cheaper than the US Army. According to CBO estimates, the Army’s total cost of operating an infantry unitin Iraq was $110 million, while hiring the same size unit from Blackwater to perform the same tasks during the same time period was only $99 million. In peacetime, the cost differential jumps even more. The cost of maintaining an army infantry unit at home is $60 million, whereas the cost of Blackwater is nothing, since the PMC’s contract would be terminated. 10 As Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld explained:
    It is clearly cost effective to have contractors for a variety of things that military people need not do, and that for whatever reason other civilians, government people, cannot be deployed to do. There are a lot of contractors, a growing number. They come from our country but they come from all countries, and indeed sometimes the contracts are from our country or another country and they employ people from totally different countries, including Iraqis and people from neighboring nations. And there are a lot of them. It’s a growing number. 11
    Mercenaries are also cost-effective for long-term engagements; historically, some employers used the same private military organization for more than a century to wage war on the cheap. Mercantile firms such as the East India companies were licensed to raise armed forces and war in service of their countries’ economic interests while sparing their governments the headache of managing global military and trade operations. By the turn of the nineteenth century, the British East India Company boasted an army of one hundred fifty thousand soldiers and 122 ships of the line, the larger ones mounting up to forty guns, a match for all but the most powerful enemy warships. However, maintaining this immense private military proved costly, both operationally and politically, and contributed to the company’s eventual demise in the late nineteenth century.
    Third, mercenaries can sometimes prove safer than public armies, as they reduce the risk of
praetorianism
, a term deriving from the infamous Praetorian Guard, the imperial bodyguard of the Roman emperors established by Augustus Caesar. During its three-hundred-year existence, it assassinated fourteen emperors, appointed five, and even sold the office to the highest bidder on one occasion. Rulers may feel safer with transient mercenaries, such as the Varangian Guard in Byzantium, than with an institutionalized security force that serves only its own interests.
    Furthermore, mercenaries’ bought loyalties may prove more reliable than public armies in the case of internal conflict and civil war. King Henry II of England engaged mercenaries to suppress the great rebellion of 1171–1174, because their devotion lay with their paymaster rather than with the ideals of the revolt. In 2011, Libyan president Muammar Qaddafi adopted the sameapproach and hired foreign fighters to violently quash national protests and fight rebellious army units.
    Mercenaries may be appealing when a ruler does not want to arm an aggrieved populace that could potentially mutiny or menace other members of society. As the medieval Venetian poet Christine de Pizan makes clear, “there is if I may dare so no greater folly for a prince, who wishes to hold his lordship freely and in peace, than to give the common people permission to arm themselves.” 12 Likewise, there was rich debate among the American founding fathers in the discussions over the US Constitution in the 1780s regarding the wisdom of standing armies. Antifederalists feared that an unemployed army could