In Defense of Mercenaries

The History News Network reprints an item published in the neocon organ Commentary by Max Boot, a military historian who has celebrated American adventurism throughout history and the invasion in Iraq in particular. Boot thinks mercenaries are getting a bum rap. He doesn't go out on a limb to say that Blackwater or any of its competitors is getting a bum rap. Instead, he contends that there is nothing inherently wrong or unacceptable about Americans employing mercenaries or acting as mercenaries abroad. He notes in passing this country's founding animus against "Hessians" but seems to dismiss it as mere resentment of an enemy. He offers counter-examples of American military heroes, foreigners who served this country or Americans who served abroad, who could be categorized as mercenaries. His list includes such heroes of the American Revolution as the Marquis de Lafayette, Baron von Steuben and John Paul Jones. Right at the beginning, then, something was wrong.

Boot seems satisfied that any soldier who receives pay is a mercenary. By this logic, of course, ours is an entirely mercenary army, as are all other armies wherever governments can afford them. But does it make the foreign heroes we were taught to revere in school mercenaries that they received commissions and pay? My understanding was that people like Lafayette sympathized with the American cause and volunteered their services in the sense of freely offering them, not offering them for free. In fact, this source says the Marquis did fight for free, as did von Steuben, though the Baron initially expected pay and got a pension later.

It seems to me that Boot can only call such people mercenaries if he defines a mercenary as anyone who is not drafted or otherwise compelled to serve. A more just definition would be anyone who contracts to fight on a purely business basis, or to the highest bidder. We should allow for some flexibility or personal preference, since I doubt that Mr. Prince of Blackwater would hire out to fight for Osama bin Laden, but I also doubt whether he applies an ethics test to every potential client. Purely in pragmatic terms, Boot may be right that mercenaries might be useful to U.S. interests. On principal, however, hiring mercenaries is a confession that one's own people are unwilling to fight their country's battles, which should always throw the motives behind those battles into question.