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During the Yugoslav wars, President Clinton sent private US military advisors in order to train Croatian troops in their fight against Serbian forces, a decisive factor in a favorable outcome for the Croatians. During the Gulf War in 1991, one-tenth of the allied troops were made up of private support, which was chiefly used for the purpose of replacement forces and maintaining infantry numbers. In the Iraq invasion in 2003, almost one-third of the soldiers were "private contractors." Today, the number of regular troops standing from the Euphrates to the Tigris is almost equal to those privately hired by security firms. The debate about the withdrawal of troops from Iraq highlights how greatly the function of mercenary deployment is transforming from a tactical to a strategic one. While the GIs are an important public topic, the 180,000 private service men and women have not publically been made an issue thus far. The estimated 170 firms that are taking over the so-called protective security assignments, promise the United States a military presence in Bagdad even after it has to withdraw its conventional forces. Here, the Republicans and the Democrats have been able to reach a consensus. Barack Obama's plans also predict a large presence of private security forces in the event of a military withdrawal. Not only the technological advancements of Western militaries, but also these developments of privatization are, in fact, the "Revolution in Military Affairs," of which there has been so much talk since the Gulf War in 1991.

Privately hired soldiers are also active on Western assignments in Afghanistan. They protect President Karzai and guard government buildings as well as important infrastructural locations. Today, the Hindu Kush and Iraqi Mesopotamia are providing the largest market for private security projects. This also comes at a time when war has again become an especially lucrative business in general: in South-East Asia and South America mercenaries fight rebels, drug cartels, and warlords; and in Africa, they secure natural gas and diamond fields. In recent years, the one and a half million employees of private military firms were deployed to more than 160 countries, and the annual turnover for these firms is currently over 200 billion US dollars.

An increasing number of contracts are coming from NGOs, which take over for national assignments in conflict regions. The same goes for international and transnational institutions such as the UN, NATO or the African Union in the context of peace-keeping or nation-building missions. Private endeavors, like the American military firm Blackwater, have discovered their commercial future: to develop the images of their activities as "peace-keeping," "stabilizing," and "humanitarian" operations. Mercenary firms see crisis regions like Sudan or the Congo, in which conventional militaries of Western states struggle to intervene, as niches in the market. Talks with American and NATO officials are already being reported.

This kind of warfare has not been seen in the Western world since the mercenary armies of the Thirty Years' War. The renewed decision of whether states should contractually and significantly intervene in the private war market should not only be left up to governments and parliaments in the West. It would make sense to implement an obligatory international registration for security firms as well as to require national permits for security services executed abroad, just as many states already do for arms exports.

Should the United Nations follow the United States' example and decide to entrust military firms with assignments that turn into combat missions, they would be loaning these companies their status as combatants under international law. However, in order to do that, the mercenaries must first become formally included into the structure of the UN. The secretariat would have to ensure that the private security firms would abide by all international laws, which the UN itself put into effect: international human rights laws, the assurances of human rights, and Article 2 of the UN charter, which describes its fundamental principles of sovereign equality of all its members, peaceful resolution of international disputes, and the prohibition of intervention in domestic disputes.

The irony of this story: While conventional soldiers of the American and European armies are supposed to be looking in their current field manuals in order to learn how they can help other nations as armed redevelopment aides, the actual mission assignments that become too militarily risky or politically sensitive, e.g., military combat and security for people and institutions, are increasingly being delegated to mercenaries. Nevertheless, the desire to build new states is itself contradictory when their inner as well as outer security is partially denationalized. In times when stronger control over financial markets has become an international topic of discussion, the issue should also include the control over the private war market. Wars, be they of a national or denationalized nature, are too important to be left up to the commercially interested logic of mercenaries.

Thomas Speckmann is consultant to the Office of the Governor of the Federal State of North-Rhine Westphalia and assistant lecturer at the seminar on political science and sociology of the University of Bonn.

This translation from German was prepared by Meredith Nicoll of the Atlantic Community Editorial Team.

Related materials from the Atlantic Community:

• Djörn Eversteijn: NATO and the Forgotten War
  
• Reidar Visser: Obama and Biden: No Fundamental Change on Iraq Policy
• Barack Obama speech: Withdrawal from Iraq and Reorientation of National Security Priorities