In all seriousness, why are mercenaries seen as a bad thing in recent history?

In all seriousness, why are mercenaries seen as a bad thing in recent history?

I mean yes they profit off of war, but so do companies involved with the countries warring. And of all things for a person to fight for, a paycheck is at the very least a reliable one. You don't really have to worry about ideological problems when the person is with you for the money, you just have to worry about being outbid. Plus, and most importantly, mercenaries have always been a thing. I mean the US has used them in every conflict we've been involved in as an independent nation since the Barbary Pirates affair (unless you can seriously argue that the 8 marines we sent were more effective than the 500 mercenaries we hired).

Mercenaries are not reliable and have a mind of their own. We can't hold them as easily accountable.

I don't see them as necessarily a bad thing, just don't expect me to give a fuck about a mercenary being killed at a US embassy in Libya. He's not an American soldier, he's a gun for hire. Don't give a fuck about what happens to him.

>Mercenaries are not reliable
Sure they are, as long as you keep paying them.

Mercenaries aren't natural extensions of the state that employs them. They're often in it for the money, and will pull out, or cause other trouble if they either think they can get away with it, or if they think the money involved is worth the trouble.

Governments know this, and will generally prefer their own more loyal/dependable soldiers if they can get them. Which in turn means that the most likely employers of mercenaries are governments that do NOT have access to dependable and loyal soldiers. If they don't, that often means that the government itself is unstable to a large degree, and unstable governments tend to breed the sorts of long simmering conflicts with a lot of atrocities; since mercenaries tend to gravitate towards those kinds of conflicts, they get reputations that attach to the sort of casual butchery.

>Governments know this, and will generally prefer their own more loyal/dependable soldiers if they can get them. Which in turn means that the most likely employers of mercenaries are governments that do NOT have access to dependable and loyal soldiers.
Except like I said, the US has used mercs in every conflict we've been in and we've had the largest military in the world for 70 years

Is that Elon Musk.

What mercenaries did you use in WW1. You weren't very involved though to be fair.

Because state centralization of military force and nationalism happened which memed people into being hostile to cunts that run around fighting only for pay.

>You don't really have to worry about ideological problems when the person is with you for the money, you just have to worry about being outbid.
A soldier in a standing army would fight for you even if your country is losing.

A merc would run at the first sign of trouble.

Actually we were the mercenaries in WW1. And for WW2 you might consider the American Volunteers Group, better known as the Flying Tigers.

While given clandestine authorization from FDR, the members were recruited and paid, along with supplied by aircraft from the Central Aircraft Manufacturing Company (CAMCO), which was organized by head sales rep of Curtiss(maker of the P-40 used by the men) in China, with funds funneled through a shell company by FDR's China guys.

>what is the treaty of westphalia and why was it necessary

All that treaty did was make it so mercenaries had to be made more accountable, it's not like people stopped using them.

>A merc would run at the first sign of trouble.
a *real* merc would. fortunately for the state most contemporary "mercenaries" are flag-worshipping former soldiers and cops who fight for ideological gratification as much as they do for the fat cheques

No a *real* merc would just engage in siege warfare, the lazy man's way of fighting. Just ask the Condottieri, they LOVED sieges as a replacement for actual fighting.

All you people calling PMCs mercs are fairly delusional. They're pretty much just security guards but on a higher level.

Nigga...

>PSC/PMC's
>"""mercenaries""
Nope.jpg.

For starters, PSCs do not engage in offensive operations. They're basically heavily armed mall cops. The days when they can pull off the shit Executive Outcomes did in West Africa are over.

The real contemporary mercenaries nowadays are criminals you can only hire through black-market channels. And those really look out for their behinds.

Feel free to elaborate. As somebody who has fought over there, they don't do shit in 99.9999% of cases and aren't even supposed to.

hence >" "

Mercenaries didn't just decline due to laws & cultural bias against them.

But private military entities simply couldn't keep up with State Militaries anymore. Back when it was just swords n shit, it was still fairly easy to run a competent mercenary outfit that can fuck up a state army.

But the requirements and scale of modern wars nowadays meant nobody can run a mercenary outfit that can stand toe to toe with a state military anymore since a paycheck couldn't cover all expenditures while your state opponents militaries are run on free money given to them by taxes.

What if someone pays them more?

Something about fighting for money rather than for a ‘greater cause’ doesn’t sit right with people

Modern morality (as far as social consciousness) dictates that war should only be waged in self-defense, and even then only really against existential threats (ergo going to war for the defense of, say, your oil rights in a foreign country is not permissible either).

So killing people literally just for money is barely a step above murder on the moral scale.

And then from the perspective of professional soldiers, mercenaries want to fight on your battlefield but they aren't interested in playing by your rules. That naturally will cause trepidation for most people.

Because they're a shit reurn, the investment for a modern mercenary company is immense to the point where all they can offer and still have any chance of turning a profit is standard light infantry and at best a semi-motorized contingent with trucks and armoured cars

Are you retarded? "PMC" is just legalese. A bunch of Russians employed by Wagner PMC just got blown up when they attempted to storm Kurdish positions and got hit by US airstrikes a few days ago.

I am an American who was a Marine and afterwards a military contractor who fought in Ukraine. Everyone I met there had different views, but no matter what, they all agreed that:
>NATO is good
>Russia is bad
>The West is the best
>Ukraine has a rightful existence as a state
No matter how shitty things got, nobody was going to just give up because they have "no ties" to the country or because the pay wasn't good enough. Going into a foreign country to fight for the sake of money doesn't make you some sociopath who feels no emotions with the locals.
A platoon I was in, all consisting of military contractors, had to go sit in a poorly made trench that was a common target for rebels taking potshots at. We could have made attempts to negotiate with other contractors or Ukrainian soldiers and be deployed in some other part of Ukraine but all of us agreed that someone had to do the dirty work, and that "someone" was going to be us.
Also, every week there would be reports of men being killed in action, and reports of men being wounded were even more frequent. Crappy living standards did not stop us from volunteering to do what -we- thought was right.

...

>ideology is a good way to avoid war crimes
not universally true, this should be self evident

If you switch sides for getting payed more when you already have a fair deal then you don't get payed by anyone anymore. Though if you don't pay them enough then yeah it's fine

>Modern morality (as far as social consciousness) dictates that war should only be waged in self-defense
This just doesn't sit right with me. It feels so unnatural, like it goes against everything in human nature. I know it's for the best considering the devastation of the last 2 major wars, but it seems like we're not even being human.

Well, it was only a matter of time before one of his companies found something hostile.