Difficulties in Researching the Fiscally-Profiteering Villains Behind Mercenary Warfare

Alessandro Arduino, Money for Mayhem: Mercenaries, Private Military Companies, Drones, and the Future of War (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, October 15, 2023). Hardcover: $38.00. 298pp. Index. ISBN: 978-1-538170-31-1.

*****

“The way war is waged is evolving quickly—igniting the rapid rise of private military contractors who offer military-style services as part of their core business model. When private actors take up state security, their incentives are not to end war and conflict but to manage the threat only enough to remain relevant.” It can be easily argued that governments are far more fiscally self-interested in continuing wars forever, as military salaries and promotions are more certain than private contracts that can have a firm termination date. “Arduino unpacks the tradeoffs involved when conflict is increasingly waged by professional outfits that thrive on chaos rather than national armies. This book charts the rise of private military actors from Russia, China, and the Middle East using primary source data, in-person interviews, and field research amongst operations in conflict zones around the world.” This list of countries excludes the US, so it seems to be biased towards the US contractors’ rivals, as opposed to being a general attack on international profit-driven warfare. “Individual stories narrated by mercenaries, military trainers, security entrepreneurs, hackers, and drone pilots are used to introduce themes… Arduino concludes by considering today’s trajectories in the deployment of mercenaries by states, corporations, or even terrorist organizations and what it will mean for the future of conflict… The book specifically reveals the risk that unaccountable mercenaries pose in increasing the threshold for conflict, the threat to traditional military forces, the corruption in political circles, and the rising threat of proxy conflicts in the US rivalry with China and Russia.” Dr. Alessandro Arduino bias stems in his specialization (among other topics) on counter-China research into China’s Belt and Road Initiative security in Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia. “Arduino is an affiliate lecturer at the Lau China Institute at King’s College London, a fellow at the China Africa Research Initiative at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies”.
This review copy came through NetGalley, which I am using to review books for the first time. This is also a rare pre-release pdf with “uncorrected proofs”. It took me some time to figure out how to access this copy, until I downloaded the NetGalley app on my phone. Since this is a pdf, this means that an entire book’s page is fitting into my phone’s window. I changed the perspective to horizontal for the letters to be regularly-sized; this means there is a lot of scrolling across and between pages. Despite this being a pdf, there was no decipherable option for downloading this book to view it on my computer.
The table of contents demonstrates that there are a lot of different sub-groups, contractors, national players and conflicts covered across this book that make for nuanced findings on the larger question of private warfare. The warfare covered is also not only the kind with bombs and bullets, but also cybercrime. There is a section within “Chapter 10: Drone Mercenaries: A New Security Paradigms from China, Russia, and Turkey” that covers “U.S. Earlier Drone Supremacy: Remote Assassination”, which is sandwiched between sections on the adversaries mentioned in the chapter’s title. Sean McFate’s “Foreword” also considers the other side, as it notes: “Today, you can rent former U.S. Special Operations Forces troops”. Though while Russian affiliates like the Wagner Groups are described as being involved in helping negative rulers in Africa, American mercenaries are portrayed as saving somebody like a Nissan CEO “from house arrest in Tokyo”. A different way of saying it is that the Americans broke somebody out of imprisonment and took him to a non-extradition country; but this illegal activity is positively spun. The “Foreword” does point out that there is a problem with all of these activities because private military groups can “resist arrest” by shooting law enforcement coming after them from state actors, and there are currently no international laws capable of reprimanding such extreme disobeying of laws that all other people have to follow. Any non-capitalistically minded group that fired back at law enforcement and came from abroad would probably be branded as a terrorist, but the mere open exchange of corporate funds shields such activities.
The “mercenary arms race” is presented as a spiking new phenomenon, but my BRRAM research identified it as being at the core of modern warfare from at least the Renaissance. Richard Verstegan was ghostwriting on various sides of conflicts, and profiting from starting and continuing wars and disagreements; he deliberately offended rival states in the press, and created suspicion, mistrust, and nationalist fervor in the texts he ghostwrote for Catholics as well as for Protestants, or for England and also for the Pope; the more animosity he could generate in counter/propaganda, the more books he sold, the more pension funds he received for his self-espionage, and the like. The same profiteering from generating the pro-war narrative is still thriving with very similar modes today. The very terminology in the “War on Terror” is a major part of this artificial creation of enemies by bombing and killing minority groups to push them into actually becoming enemies that need to hire propagandists and militias of their own to fight back against the onslaught. If the profit motive was removed and nobody could benefit from writing/publishing pro-war propaganda, and nobody could make a salary from firing weaponry; then, there would be no more warfare on earth. Only propagandistic fictions can imagine a motive for any group to attack any other group, instead of peacefully coexisting and conducting mutually beneficial business. The “Foreword” aptly brings in a quote from a “fourteenth-century Italian writer Franco Sacchetti” that explains in a parable that just as monks profit from alms, mercenaries profit from the continuation of warfare. But McFate does not learn from this example, as the conclusion he draws is that the market for mercenaries is just a tool that can be sed for good and evil means. In contrast, the lesson of the parable is that the marketplace of warfare itself is evil, as opposed to any specific players within this game.
“Chapter One: Private Armies” explains that the 1989 UN International Convention against the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries (or cross-country for-profit warfare fighters) prohibited the use of mercenaries “but no specific body at the international level is tasked to monitor, oversee, and guide the implementation of the convention”. In other words, both US and foreign businesses who engage in all activities described across this book are breaking international law, but there is no international court capable of enforcing this legal boundary, and so all sides are carrying on with it, and bringing millions of death and much property destruction as they proceed. Arduino notes that there was a lull in “full-scale wars between sovereign nation-states” between the end of the colonial era, the world wars and the “U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq”. U.S. had previously invaded and attacked Korea and other nation-states, but Arduino seems to be classifying these as too minor to count in the overall data. From the broader perspective, the U.S. has been violating with warfare countries across the globe between WWII and the present moment, and Russia has just taken a relative break from these activities between the fall of the USSR and the present Ukraine war. Arduino uses the history of Romans hiring mercenaries to claim that such profiteering is a normal part of human activities. But my findings regarding the tendency to create falsehoods or fictions that fit a propagandistic argument indicate that much of ancient history is likely to have been imagined by later historians, who are not likely to have had much surviving written evidence to base their claims on. Thus, the military habits of the sponsors of these propagandists might be skewing our perspective on just how rare mercenary warfare or warfare in general was until the last 500 years when print and the fictional propaganda it can spread has influenced our perceptions of who our “enemies” (or “barbarians” as the Roman propagandists called them) are.
When Arduino looks at specific examples of mercenary activities from the hostile actors depicted in this book the narrative becomes cloudy. For example, there is an oligopoly of a few “top Chinese private security firms” that help protect international Chinese business and state operations, and the Chinese are hesitant to hire non-Chinese protection services; this is a basic statement of nationalist propaganda, and yet it is proposed as if it is an aggressive act that China is taking, by refusing to hire Western mercenaries. Just as Blackwater is profiting from a constant anti-Jihad sentiment; there is a Malhama Tactical Group that is a “Blackwater of Jihad” outfit that is providing “training for profit to Al Qaeda affiliates in Syria and Africa”. The problem from Arduino’s perspective seems to be that Western mercenaries and nations cannot “win” the conflicts they are profiting from if the other side is also pumping funds to oppose their efforts. Another problem that Arduino is concerned about is one that affects him personally, or that researchers like himself can be accused of espionage for “snooping” into Chinese or Russian mercenary affairs in the current militant international climate. Examples of this include the espionage charges against the Wall Street Journal reporter, Evan Gershkovich, in Russia. Such researchers now need to register as a “foreign agent” to avoid “detention”. However, the “suicides” or alleged robberies that have been cited as causes of death for several researchers looking into Russian contractors can also be seen as similar activities to how U.S. mercenaries “freed” a Japanese businessman from imprisonment through violent means. If U.S. actors can assassinate Iraqi or Afghan politicians or business leaders by labeling them as terrorists; this eliminates the moral high-ground of outrage against similar activities from the other sides. In the Ukrainian conflict, one of the big mysteries is who is bombing sites in Russia and attacking troublesome places such as commercial bridges, or attempting assassinations; when Ukraine does not take official credit for these operations, it suggests that mercenaries or terrorist actors are “derailing peace negotiations”. Since profit-seeking entities would blatantly be interested in such derailments, figuring out who is responsible can help bring about a peaceful resolution for all sides. The little “coup” the Wagner group staged in marching on Moscow is also confusing, as it seems to have been orchestrated to diffuse attention away from it and other profiteers of being responsible for the conflict, by reframing them as an entity that is interested in peace, but is being forced into warfare by Russia’s autocrats. Arduino explains that the lack of information on the Wagner Group’s source of funding is a major hurdle to solving this whodunnit. This seemingly is a very simple mystery to solve, as a forensic accountant with access to records in a couple of countries should crack this case. So the real mystery is why a team of accountants hasn’t been launched to help end the Ukraine war. In fact, Arduino is the accountant or researcher who should have solved this question in this book, but instead this chapter is presenting questions and arguing that such investigations are impossible. Arduino points out that in the U.S. “the first wave of public criticism on contractors was ignited in 2007 by the Nisour Square massacre when Blackwater operators indiscriminately opened fire on Iraqi civilians, killing seventeen bystanders”. But Arduino makes it seem as if this was an isolated incident that withdrew the main actor, Blackwater, out of the conflict; in contrast, there have been millions of civilians that have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan by both mercenary and military Americans, so these incidents have remained common; it is only the media coverage of these problems that has eased up, or stopped portraying such bloodshed as crimes against humanity. Arduino also explains that the maneuvers that move mercenaries away from conflicts when a side decides to claim they have already “won” can immediately shift power to the opposition (as during the “fall of Kabul” in 2021. Funding warfare against an enemy generates a need for self-defense from a potentially previously peaceful population; and then withdrawing funding for a sub-groups self-defense can cause tyrannical takeovers of regions by the most violent paid-for militias in the region. Arduino mentions a curious problem: the invasion of Crimea by Russia a decade ago triggered western sanctions that limited Russia’s government budget; this restriction led to an increased desperate need to “win” the conflict through open warfare with Ukraine as a whole; and now that a “win” for Russia appears impossible, they seem to be stuck in a death-spiral. If mercenaries such as the Wagner Group have been profiting across this decade from fighting in Ukraine without Russia’s governmental military force; then, the war had to have been prevented by limiting the availability of such mercenary war-waging or defending powers. And after the pure-profit motive is withdrawn and the war becomes a struggle over nationalistic concepts such as Russian or Ukrainian pride, the war can only be ended by propagandists on both sides letting go of this death-grip spiral, but such a fictive turn-around is difficult, as it is difficult to explain the point of thousands of lost lives and the destruction of cities if the nationalist motive is deflated into being insignificant. Arduino also explains that the need to hire mercenaries in the Middle East and North Africa is partly due to the threat Russia faces of otherwise losing “access to sea lanes of communication and natural resources”. In other words, the sanctions western and other actors place on Russia and China are creating the very threat of a loss of communications or resources that makes mercenary or governmental violence a necessity to defend the basic interests of the Russian people to access resources like food and gas. In this case, avoiding sanctions on the people, and instead creating international laws that punish those who kill for profit is the simple solution that Arduino fails to imagine. This is where Arduino’s note that “only fragments of evidence have emerged over” Wagner Group’s “origin and the contractor’s involvement in combat operations” is so problematic. Finding these fiscal roots and branches might end several wars across large portions of the world, so there should be at least as much funding invested in this effort as in sending weaponry to help the various sides defend themselves against this Group. Arduino doubts that Prigozhin is the Wagner Group’s “puppet master”. And indeed, it is possible that this Group’s puppet master is an American business man who is also investing in American mercenary and governmental groups and profits from creating an enemy by being paid to defend against this enemy.
In the second chapter, Arduino notes that Chechyan President Kadyrov has cited that the FBI had a “$250,000… bounty… on Prigozhin’s head”, and this convinced him to send his troops to support Putin’s in Ukraine, just so he could attempt to catch Prigozhin and claim this bounty. Here is an obvious profit to be gained in going after a specific named “enemy”. Why the stated “enemy” is “evil” and worthy of capture or assassination is a debate for propagandists. The real problem is that all sides buy into the legality of such violent cross-boundary intrusions that cannot be policed by rational courts in the countries involved. Arduino notes that this general philosophy of aggression might be rooted in “the role Western mercenaries” played in “Africa in the 1980s”, through their monopolization of the “postcolonial” or anti-colonial fight by “mercenary groups such as the… Executive Outcomes (EO)”. It is easy for propagandists to explain all colonialism as evil, and if there is a clear moral “enemy”; then, it is not a violation of human rights to slaughter this enemy, even if it is replaced with a far more brutal and repressive totalitarian military regime. A private military group can be sponsored to enter a zone to make it seem as if a region is rebellious to justify the use of a much larger militant group to suppress this fictionally generated “enemy”. All such conflicts would end if researchers were purely interested in learning and disseminating the truth, as locating the true beneficiaries of warfare is likely to concentrate the “enemy” in a handful of profiteers, instead of on any ethnicity, class, race, or nationality.
If this was a book from an academic press, I would complain that across the first few chapters the author only mentioned a few facts, and instead spent most of these pages on speculation. But since this is a trade title, and it managed to keep me reading every word for around 50 pages, it is clear that it has succeeded in drawing a reader into its web. There are enough new facts presented that I had some quotes to offer to explain the various theoretical questions that this content raised in my imagination. If I had previously reviewed many other books on this topic, it might have been less surprising. But given my relative ignorance on this topic, it was very useful in helping me to understand the much lighter strokes with which these mercenary conflicts tend to be explained in the media. There is clearly a need for somebody to dive much deeper into the fiscal and contractual evidence, but perhaps this author does so across the rest of the book, introducing bits of information separately, instead of clustering it as tightly as it needs to be woven in an academic book. Thus, all who are similarly interested in understanding modern warfare and profiteering are also likely to enjoy reading this book casually. So it is a good fit for libraries of all types, and even private readers might enjoy purchasing it for their private libraries (I infrequently give the latter recommendation, as I tend to be cheap in such expenditures, preferring free review copies).