The mercenaries in history and the Wagner Group

By: Ricardo Israel - 07/06/2023

John Keegan is one of the most important military historians of the 20th century, and just as Carl von Clausewitz wrote that war was the continuation of politics by other means, Professor Keegan enlightened us about war as an enduring cultural phenomenon, and as convincingly described in History of War (Turner Press, 1964) and other works, it has been present in virtually every culture and age. In his books, mercenaries appear on many pages as a factor of ordinary occurrence.

This is how it happened in history, and perhaps the prominence that the Wagner Group -one of the several present in Russia today- has acquired in the invasion of Ukraine, is due to the fact that in the 20th century it lost habituality as well as its importance in conflicts. of the 19th century. In other words, we get used to it.

This is what explains its figuration in legal documents such as the US Constitution as well as in the Conventions or Geneva Conventions. For the rest, the cinema has familiarized us with the mercenaries that were used and hired in several of the wars after the decolonization of Africa, in the 50s and 60s, as well as with that habitual presence in the cinema and literature of the Legion. French, despite the fact that the fundamental thing there was not the pay or remuneration, and there was also a link with the French State.

The Legion was and probably still is. a hybrid form that included ex-convicts and/or those fleeing from justice in different parts of the world.

The Geneva Conventions (1949) and their additional protocols do not recognize them as legitimate combatants and they are not granted the same legal protection as if they were members of a regular army. Not for this reason, they are necessarily considered illegal, since mercenary soldiers are authorized to provide services in some few but existing countries.

The Geneva Conventions are a collection of four treaties that regulate international legal standards for humanitarian treatment in war. They tell us that even if they are not part of a regular army, a mercenary soldier would be a private individual who is hired (in prison or at liberty) to participate in an armed or military conflict for personal benefit, although remuneration is not always the only motivation or not even the most important, understanding that the form of payment can be money or another benefit, and it is in this last sense that the participation or entry of a foreigner to a war or even to a regular army is also understood, as antecedents to obtain nationality or citizenship.

By the way, throughout history the conversion of the prisoner (before also, slaves) into a mercenary in exchange for freedom has been used frequently, standing out empires such as the Roman in this practice.

Does it mean that there is no novelty or nothing new under the sun?

Not necessarily. Geneva is an advance in civilizing regulation, and the expectation of the Agreements or Conventions is that all those who participate in an armed conflict respect human rights and provide humanitarian treatment to civilians and combatants.

In the case of the American Constitution, in Philadelphia in 1787, article I section 8 indicates the powers that were granted to Congress and together with the punishment for "Piracy... committed on the High Seas" says that Congress may "Declare war , grant letters of mark and retaliation and dictate regulations regarding captures on land and water”. The aforementioned “charter of mark and retaliation” is a license where a government authorizes a private entity or person to cross international borders in retaliation for an attack, offense or injury. To cause harm is, in other words, the equivalent of a letter of marque.

The standard procedure that Congress authorizes and it is the president who signs the patent, establishing the purpose of the military operation and the time in which it must take place. Whoever receives the patent had to make a money deposit as well as the commitment to respect international laws and something that Geneva includes, the possibility of being prosecuted in case of non-compliance.

It was drafted at a time when the letter of marque still mixed a share of patriotic loyalty with financial benefits. The United States issued a letter of marque in 1815 when, in the context of the Second Berber War, President James Madison authorized the Grand Turk to attack "Algerian vessels, public or private, goods and effects owned or controlled by the Dey of Algiers".

The idea did not completely disappear from the moment that after the attacks of September 11, 2001 there were legislative proposals that failed to advance to use these patents in the fight against terrorism as well as against Somali pirates, without arousing interest, neither political nor communicational.

The modern origin with a business perspective of mercenaries can be traced back to 1965, when in keeping with their colonialist tradition, a group of British veterans of the SAS (Special Air Service) special forces formed WhatchGuard International, whose first deployment was in Yemen, on the side of the royalist forces.

In the USA, the CIA uses what it calls "contractors", and those who provide these services vary, from military uses in wars to services provided in activities, where the government does not want to be seen as participating.

Not only in the USA, the international denomination that is used and thus appears in official documents of the Congress, is Private Military Company or PMSC (it is also applied to security services in a war context). It is a private company that provides armed combat services or just security, as happened in the so-called "green zone" of Baghdad, after the occupation of Iraq.

The PMSC can help an army as well as just being a group with a presence in a war zone, where they are considered irregular combatants, who by the way could easily become illegal, if they fall into some of the behaviors and actions punishable by the Geneva Conventions.

Iraq was a kind of intermediate stage, since its characteristic was not so much the role of mercenaries as a huge privatization, in which post-invasion security was in private hands, directly or outsourced, and the truth is that in all the centuries XIX and XX a war of this magnitude was not known with such a level of privatization, on the part of a great power.

In some conflicts the situation is complicated when foreign volunteers participate and are invited to do so, in regular formations or through specially created units, although unlike mercenaries, there is no monetary interest here. This was the case for those who fought on the republican side in the Spanish civil war, but also for those who received much journalistic interest at the beginning of the war in Ukraine.

Russia called them mercenaries, but they do not seem to meet the characteristics set in Geneva, nor did the Nepalese Gurkas (or Gurjas), since they were integrated as a Regiment in the United Kingdom Army, therefore receiving official sanction, being also used as a psychological weapon due to its legend of warrior ferocity.

In other words, what is definitive in a mercenary is not so much his nationality as whether or not he belongs to the Armed Forces. regular, which is very clear in the permanent dispute between Yevgueni Prigozhin, owner of the Wagner group, with the Russian generals in the Ukraine, a focus of permanent political and journalistic interest.

Wagner has acquired a strong presence, not only in the media, since it has been much more than a PMC, having played a relevant role in, for example, the long battle for Bakhmut, in its disputes with the Defense establishment, due to its supposed or effective current proximity. with Putin, and for actions such as the formal delivery of the corpses of Westerners to the Ukrainian government, as a form of recognition of the acquired war status.

It is not necessary to go back to the Romans, or even before, to talk about mercenaries, since at least since the 15th century, there were companies of condottieres with war experience who contracted their services for payments to be freely agreed. For example, mercenary services to the city appear, in the siege of Constantinople in the previous century.

To make matters worse, there is hybrid evidence in the pirates transformed into corsairs by the English crown in their conflict with Spain, whose conquest of America also had a component of early capitalism, through those who invested in the equipment and support of the conquerors. This element was perfected by the Dutch and British joint-stock companies for the conquest of the East, whether it was Indonesia or India, which incidentally also included military and security functions.

Being a mercenary, even if your salary was paid in salt, was for centuries a way of getting to know the world through conquest and abandoning a life that for the vast majority could only unfold in a few kilometers around the place of birth.

Later it will be done in the name of kings and with the Napoleonic wars the idea of expanding the French Revolution appears. It is only with the arrival of the 19th century and with the universalization of the nation-state as a defining element, that it and its flag become the one who demands loyalty and in whose name wars are waged, a visible process in European wars and also in the American independence, but which received its consecration with the First World War. Since then, the idea that wars are made and fought for the homeland has predominated.

Today, in the Ukraine, mercenaries have reappeared as an item of public interest, although this brief review goes to show that they have always been around, or perhaps never quite gone.

Wagner is not the only one since there are at least five large companies in Russia, but it is the most powerful and well-known.

Its future role is not clear, since its dispute with the Russian generalate should end with one of the two prevailing, whether or not the analyzes that place its owner in the fight for personal political leadership are real.

Whether or not this is true, if Prigozhin reasserts his entrepreneurial streak, there may be a fortune awaiting him in the various conflicts taking place in a world where there is a growing market in so many companies that need to protect their investments in forgotten countries and wars, as well as governments. Before the Ukraine, Prigozhin would once have bragged to clients that he would have no problem working for the CIA. It is not clear if he still thinks so.

Wagner can offer mercenaries who have accumulated experience in Chechnya, Georgia, Syria and now the Ukraine. If his path is not a political competition that can be fiercer than war, there may be a great competitive advantage for Wagner in this market.

If not politics, a huge fortune could await him, but also an indictment from the prosecutors of the International Criminal Court.

The house that accepts bets is missing.

«The opinions published herein are the sole responsibility of its author».