Mercenarism – a well forgotten past

Interview

There are about 10-15% of people in any society who want to kill. They want to fight the war, aspire to exploits, glory in combat – this is in their human nature. A legitimate question comes to mind: what society and state can do about these people? It is precisely the conflicts that permit modern societies to at least partially address this problem by providing mercenaries with a field of activity. Mr. Alexey Fenenko, Candidate of Historical Sciences and Leading Researcher in the Institute of International Security Issues of the Russian Academy of Science, shared his view on this topic.

Interview

There are about 10-15% of people in any society who want to kill. They want to fight the war, aspire to exploits, glory in combat – this is in their human nature. A legitimate question comes to mind: what society and state can do about these people? It is precisely the conflicts that permit modern societies to at least partially address this problem by providing mercenaries with a field of activity. Mr. Alexey Fenenko, Candidate of Historical Sciences and Leading Researcher in the Institute of International Security Issues of the Russian Academy of Science, shared his view on this topic.

Alexey Valerievich, how efficient is such an instrument as mercenarism in the modern world? Can this experience be applied to the current situation in Russia?

In my opinion the modern world has returned to the XVI century in some respects. We are phasing out the overall conscription system and moving to a situation when the kings hired their armies. Professional army is the army of mercenaries. This means that again, as in XVI-XVII, the heads of the leading countries are staking on small contingents of armed professionals who are to carry out specific professional missions. The times when it was argued that the army should be small, highly professional, efficient and weakly associated with the rest of population have come back.

When it comes to the conflicts in Afghanistan, Africa, Syria, – in my view the situation is different. We have been often told that the mercenaries going there – is a catastrophe for Russia and the United States. Let me try to prove this is not the case. It should be pointed out that there are 10-15% of people in any society who want to kill. They want to make war, aspire to heroic deeds, glory, and armed fights – this is inherent in human nature. A legitimate question comes to mind – where the society or state should send them? It is precisely the conflicts that partially help address this problem. No country in the world has yet taken any real measures to prevent the mercenaries from leaving. This has been talked about for over 30 or 40 years but no one wants to do anything about it. I suspect that heads of states would be happy to get rid of this part of population.

Photo: Alexei Fenenko

Let me recall that the surplus of such people was registered in the Soviet Union since late 1970s. The situation exacerbated after the situation in Afghanistan when a great number of people trained in a professional mountain war started to come back home. This resulted in enormous growth of crime rate in the country. Just imagine: while previously the police was able to catch criminals more or less efficiently, now it confronted the criminals a full-strength police squad could not cope with. Such people enlisted in the army, became professional athletes, and some of them – criminals. Where else in peace time could they apply their professional killer skills? Besides, the United States faced the same problem after the Vietnam War. Therefore, this is not a purely Russia-specific problem. France confronted it after the Algerian War and the conflicts in Africa in late 1950s. The problem of excessive violence needed somehow to be addressed. These forces spilled over into the collapse of the Soviet Union and regional conflicts (Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Nagorny Karabakh, Chechnya, etc.) Now I suspect that with the help of mercenarism and by moving these conflicts to Afghanistan, Africa and other locations on this planet our societies are solving this task with relative efficiency. We simply send them there because these people are not necessary from the viewpoint of the average law abiding citizen. If they are kept home we are likely to have revolutions and armed conflicts once again.

Do you think mercenarism should exist as a separate institution from the army or the army itself should be mercenary?

The point is that as soon as the army became mercenary and highly professional, there was no more need for mass mobilization of population. This is a common practice that is coming with some delay to Russia. What is the reform of the Russian army we have debated since 1991? This in particular is the discontinuation of general conscription. As a result, two problems arise. First, where should the professionals who are no longer needed go? They cannot do anything else and are not used to a peaceful life. There is a risk that they might enter the ranks of the criminal world or join the extremist movements, and we will have armed extremist squads operating in the developed countries. Paid armed service helps address this problem.

Some time ago the historian Joachim Fest wrote in his book about Hitler that "Hitler came to power because in the society there were a lot of officers who lost the war ". I think that the conflicts are also maintained by the developed countries among others in order to somehow get rid of these people. This was always the case and this is not a new phenomenon in the modern world because this could be done through the colonial policy in the past. Today there is no more colonial policy, no major inter-state wars, and powerful armies are less required than in the past while the conflicts continue.

If this is actually the case, doesn't it seem to you that the Western or Russian society exports its problems and destabilization to other parts of the world by sending "unnecessary people", the mercenaries, to the locations where it is required?

Photo: defenseimagery.mil
French Foreign Legion, Saudi Arabia, 1992

Yes, indeed. The developed countries could not care less about what is happening in Africa, Syria, or Afghanistan. Let me draw your attention to an interesting point: these conflicts are being portrayed as a threat to mankind, but decades pass and it turns out that there is actually no threat at all. How many wars happened in Africa over the past decade? There were wars unleashed in Liberia, the Congolese War and others… Who remembers or studies them here in Russia? It is to our advantage to send such people to these conflicts. The same is true for Syria. I assume that as a result of a conflict this country, just like Libya, can turn into a second Afghanistan. This would be an eternal problem since the mercenaries would continue to go there and fight infinitely against each other. This is what we are already observing in Afghanistan. In essence, this is the territory where the war has continued for 30 years.

I fear that the regional conflicts of Afghan or Syrian type will lead to a major change in the international arena in the next two decades (I am talking about the conflicts in the Muslim world in particular, rather than about Africa). I think our civilization risks reverting to a certain form of genocide. Just take note of the way this issue is presented: what can we do with societies that have bred terrorists for generations? No matter what we do, no matter how much money we spend there, they continue breeding terrorists. Moreover, I will recall that unlike World War II the genocide becomes technically possible because of the existence of weapons of mass destruction, in particular neutron bombs. These are ideal weapons for genocide. In the past it was extremely difficult to commit – it required concentration camps, death camps or some other facilities of that type to be built. According to the documentary evidence, in 1943 Himmler issued a secret directive on the need to exterminate all personnel of the concentration camps along with their victims after the end of genocide. The reason was simple – having suffered such a terrible ordeal they would never be able to become normal citizens of a normal society. The same applies to the current case. There is no need to build camps – it is just enough to use a certain amount of weapons of mass destruction to totally eliminate the roots of the evil. If we resort to such actions, there will be an absolutely different civilization. I suspect that some regional conflicts may end exactly this way, and I see a great danger in it.