Fortune's Warriors: Private Armies and the New World Order

J.L. Granatstein, distinguished research professor emeritus of history
at York University. He is the author of Who Killed Canadian History? and
co-author of The Canadian 100: The 100 Most Influential Canadians of the
20th Century, Prime Ministers: Ranking

“Mercenary” is a dirty word these days, though it was not always so.
Mercenary soldiers, bought from a duke or prince, fought wars for
Britain and other nations for years, and today’s Gurkhas are
mercenaries too. But the term usually is taken to mean hired guns who
sign up to crush some small African nation or seize islands in the
Pacific, in the process toppling the local government. Canadians, of
course, assume that we, the peacekeepers to the world, would never
produce mercenaries.

James Davis was a Canadian soldier (1985–96) and the author of the
excellent The Sharp End (1997), an account of his life in the army. Now
he is active in what is described as “the international security
industry,” and his book describes the role of private armies
sympathetically. In his considered view, such military forces can bring
order to parts of the world that are in chaos. Consider Sierra Leone, a
West African nation that has been prey to local thugs with huge loss of
life. Since the West and the United Nations have failed to intervene
effectively, might it not be better to send in a private army to sort
out the situation? In fact, western states have been doing just that in
many parts of the world, usually with a nudge and a wink to justify such
actions to their political leaders. South African and British
ex-soldiers figure prominently in most accounts, and undoubtedly some of
the mercenaries verged on thuggishness too.

Davis’s contribution, however, is to make the case for such private
armies as a tool that can be used to restore order. Readers may be
sceptical about his arguments, but they will not simply dismiss the idea
out of hand.