William Sturgiss Lind,
Director of the Center for Cultural Conservatism
at the Free Congress Foundation, is a native
of Cleveland, Ohio, born July 9, 1947. He
graduated magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa
from Dartmouth College in 1969 and received
a Master's Degree in History from Princeton
University in 1971. He worked as a legislative
aide for armed services for Senator Robert
Taft, Jr., of Ohio from 1973 through 1976
and held a similar position with Senator Gary
Hart of Colorado from 1977 through 1986. He
joined Free Congress Foundation in 1987.
Mr.
Lind is author of the Maneuver Warfare Handbook
(Westview Press, 1985); co-author, with Gary
Hart, of America Can Win: The Case for Military
Reform (Adler & Adler, 1986); and co-author,
with William H. Marshner, of Cultural Conservatism:
Toward a New National Agenda (Free Congress
Foundation, 1987). He has written extensively
for both popular media, including The Washington
Post, The New York Times, and Harper's, and
professional military journals, including
The Marine Corps Gazette, U.S. Naval Institute
Proceedings and Military Review.
Mr. Lind
co-authored the prescient article, "The Changing
Face of War: Into the Fourth Generation,"
which was published in The Marine Corps Gazette
in October, 1989 and which first propounded
the concept of "Fourth Generation War." Mr.
Lind and his co-authors predicted that states
would increasingly face threats not from other
states, but from non-state forces whose primary
allegiance was to their religion, ethnic group
or ideology. Following the events of September
11, 2001, the article has been credited for
its foresight by The New York Times Magazine
and The Atlantic Monthly.
Mr. Lind is co-author
with Paul M. Weyrich of the monograph: "Why
Islam is a Threat to America and The West."
He is the author of "George W. Bush's `War
on Terrorism': Faulty Strategy and Bad Tactics?"
Both were published in 2002 by the Free Congress
Foundation.
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Many years ago, old Uncle Karl foresaw a "withering away of the state" as a prelude to the inauguration of international communism. As history turned out, communism died before the state did. But the state is withering away, as a most interesting development in Iraq demonstrates. Like many aspects of Fourth Generation war, this development is not something new, but something old, from the time before the state's monopoly on war: mercenaries.
My hometown newspaper, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, recently dispatched its Friday!Magazine editor, Chuck Yarborough, on an extended journey through Iraq. Friday!Magazine normally reports on plays, movies, restaurants and other entertainment, so Mr. Yarborough's stories reflect a fresh view of that vastly entertaining subject, war. I will leave it to others to speculate as to whether Cleveland is so dull on a Friday night that even Iraq is an improvement ("Would you like those pierogies with or without accordion music?").
In his February 9th story, Yarborough describes Iraq as "a dirty, nasty countryside that looks like the tide just went out on the River Styx ... Each time we ground to a stop -- as we did often -- our South African personal security detachment (PSD, as it is called here) went on high alert ... Task Force Shield commander Col. Tom O'Donnell, fresh off 10 days in the United States briefing National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice's deputy on the progress of providing security for the Iraqi oil pipeline, and I rode in the back seat ... Trailing us in an unarmored Jeep were the rest of the Erinys Co. team assigned to protect O'Donnell."
So U.S. Army colonels now have mercs, not American soldiers, providing their security. "That's very interesting," as John Boyd liked to say. A front-page story in the February 18 Washington Post adds more:
"Attacks on the private contractors rebuilding Iraq are boosting security expenses, cutting into reconstruction funds and compelling U.S. officials in Baghdad to contend with growing legions of private, armed security teams spread throughout the country ... U.S. and coalition military forces, which are being trimmed and face continuing attacks, cannot provide contractor protection, and neither can fledgling Iraqi forces ... leaving private teams as the main protection for contractors ... Major security contractors (in Iraq) estimated in interviews that at least 40 private security companies and several thousand armed guards already are working in the country."
So while at the micro level an American Army colonel has a merc security detail, at the macro level mercenaries are filling the gap between American military forces engulfed in their own war and the security units of Iraq's Vichy regime, most of which are less than keen to fight.
What does the return of mercenaries on a large scale, in a theatre of war, tell us? It tells us that state militaries have become so bureaucratic, expensive and top-heavy that they are losing the ability to fight.
As expensive as mercenaries are -- and the Post article quotes a figure of $1,000 per day for skilled bodyguards -- they are still cheaper than state military forces. This is not because the U.S. Army overpays its privates and sergeants, but because the $400 billion America pays each year for defense buys very few privates and sergeants in the combat arms, guys who can actually fight. Most of the money goes for overhead: contractor welfare in the form of multi-billion dollar programs for irrelevant weapons like the F-22, endless consultants (most retired generals and colonels who already collect large pensions), a bloated officer corps above the company grades, a vast rear area made ever-larger by the needs of complex, computerized "systems," and layer upon layer of headquarters, each with a small army of horse-holders and flower-strewers. If you want to imagine a modern state military (others differ from our own only in degree), think of a brontosaurus with three teeth.
This is a classic sign of generational change. The passing generation requires vast resources for little battlefield output, while the coming generation knows how to do much with small resources. The Maginot Line cost many times more than Guderian's panzers. Think of what an organization like al Qaeda can do with a million dollars compared to what the same money means to the Pentagon.
But it is not just the passing of state militaries that we see in the rise of mercenaries. It is the withering away of the state itself. Mercenaries mark the state's loss of its monopoly on war just as surely as do the rise of non-state actors. Mercs will work for whoever pays them, state or non-state player. The more roles they fill, the more irrelevant the state becomes.
Maybe it is time for the Grimaldis, those old galley-fleet entrepreneurs who still rule Monaco, to ask discreetly if we would like someone to patrol the Tigris and the Euphrates.
