Machiavelli on Blackwater

[Pat H]

There are some who might say that Machiavelli, who lived 1469 to1527, hasn't any application to today's situation. I disagree.

October 6, 2007
Machiavelli's Real Transgression
by Alan Bock

I was planning to write about Blackwater and a growing distaste for contracting-out, privatizing or outsourcing various operations in wartime to "mercenaries," and I will a bit. But the topic of mercenaries got me to thinking about Machiavelli, who famously advised the ruler in his small masterpiece, The Prince, to avoid mercenaries.

"Mercenaries and auxiliaries are useless and dangerous," he wrote, "and if one holds his state based on these arms, he will stand neither firm nor safe; for they are disunited, ambitious and without discipline, unfaithful, valiant before friends, cowardly before enemies; they have neither the fear of God nor fidelity to men, and destruction is deferred only so long as the attack is; for in peace one is robbed by them, and in war by the enemy … They are ready enough to be your soldiers whilst you do not make war, but if war comes they take themselves off or run from the foe; which I should have little trouble to prove, for the ruin of Italy has been caused by nothing else than by resting all her hopes for many years on mercenaries, and although they formerly made some display and appeared valiant among themselves, yet when foreigners came they showed what they were."

That's about as accurate a statement as can be had today.

Read the rest by Alan Bock, who is a conservative author that has a byline in the Orange County Register.

 

[Justme]

Many of the mercenaries are actually US soldiers. I have heard that some of the guys are on "leave of absence" and get to go back into their units once they serve out their contract(I got this from ex-soldier friends so it may not be accurate).

By machiavelli's definition our whole military would be considered mercenaries. He would have favored impressed or conscripted soldiers and sailors, I tend to agree but america is very much against any return of the draft.

 

[Creature]

I dont see Blackwater as "mercanaries" as described by Machiavelli...they dont take and hold ground/property as mercanaries were more likely to do in Machiavelli's day.

Blackwater functions more in a support and security role in Iraq. Blackwater is less like mercanaries than the Privateers from the American Revolution.

 

[Slugthrower]

Interestingly, our military isn't as much soldiers as they are international policemen these days.

So we have mercs that are playing overly armed bodyguards, soldiers playing policemen, and politicians playing as Lords and Barons as opposed to Representatives...

Strange days these are.

 

[CelticMP]

Also...

In The Prince, if you read the whole passage about merc's, he is refering to entire Armies or Battalions made up of mercenaries, not small protective units like Blackwater fields. But the correlation does raise an eyebrow.