On the scourge of mercenary arms (in Iraq)

By Michael J.W. Stickings

They may not get it in Washington, but they seem to be getting it in Baghdad, more or less, at least with respect to the nature of many of those currently tasked with waging the Iraq War and Occupation:

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki asked the U.S. State Department to "pull Blackwater out of Iraq," after an Iraqi probe concluded that the private contractors committed unprovoked and random killings in a September 16 shooting, an adviser to al-Maliki told CNN.

The State Department is claiming that it hasn't received a "special request" for Blackwater to leave the country, but, of course, denial has been the name of the game all along.

Much has been written about Blackwater and other mercenary outfits in Iraq, fighting the war alongside the U.S. military, or at least taking part in the war to a significant degree, the outsourcing of war to the largely unaccountable, and I don't have much to add here.

What I did want to do, though, was to look back to what one of history's greatest military strategists, Machiavelli, had to say about mercenary armies/arms. In Chapter 12 of The Prince (Mansfield translation), Machiavelli asserts that "the present ruin of Italy" -- and this was very much his concern, the founder of modernity but also an Italian nationalist -- "is caused by nothing other than its having relied for a period of many years on mercenary arms":

I want to demonstrate better the failure of these arms. Mercenary captains are either excellent men of arms or not: if they are, you cannot trust them because they always aspire to their own greatness, either by oppressing you, who are their patron, or by oppressing others contrary to your intention; but if the captain is not virtuous, he ruins you in the ordinary way. And if one responds that whoever has arms in hand will do this, mercenary or not, I would reply that arms have to be employed either by a prince or by a republic. The prince should go in person, and perform himself the office of captain. The republic has to send its citizens, and when it sends one who does not turn out to be a worthy man, it must change him; and if he is, it must check him with laws so that he does not step out of bounds. And by experience one sees that only princes and armed republics make very great progress; nothing but harm ever comes from mercenary arms.

Of course, the U.S. hasn't made much in the way of progress in Iraq and has rather caused a good deal of harm. And, to be fair, the use of mercenary arms, outfits like Blackwater, likely won't cause the ruin of America -- there are many other causes for that seemingly inevitable eventuality. But the Iraqis -- remember them? remember all that talk of liberation, of freedom on the march? -- hardly could have expected, now almost five years into the war, that the U.S., their occupier, would come to rely so heavily on unaccountable private military units. It is hardly any wonder that there has been such trouble, the killing of civilians, given that unaccountability -- given the advice Machiavelli offered to his readers almost 500 years ago, advice we would, these days, be well-advised to take seriously.

The Iraq War and Occupation has been a disaster -- and would have been with or without the presence of mercenaries. But the war and occupation have been worse than they otherwise would have been because of their presence, because of their abuses. I'm sure some of the mercenaries are good people doing good work, even in the middle of a bad war, and perhaps not all of the mercenary outfits are like Blackwater. The problem is, there's Blackwater, and Blackwater has made the whole problem worse.

Machiavelli, it is safe to say, was right. You just can't trust mercenary armies.

The U.S., a republic, has its own citizens in Iraq, to be sure, not just mercenaries. However, Bush has weakened the America's republican institutions by enhancing the powers of the executive branch, that is, by ruling as an authoritarian without regard either for checks and balances or for the rule of law. Following Machiavelli's advice, there is only one possible conclusion to draw:

Bush should go to Iraq in person, not just for a photo-op visit but to take over as "captain," the warmonger at war, up close and personal with the disaster he unleashed upon the Iraqi people.