Mercenarious

This Weekend Economist was about mercenaries - specifically one Eric Prince, head of a famous American mercenary outfit. I really like episodes like this that give me a little bit of insight into a world that I had never really thought about.

I thought: mercenaries basically meant Russian or Latino.

Actually: there are several American mercenary outfits and they are, to an extent, like a normal company with presidents and offices and respectable sounding names like "Dyncorp" and "Blackwater group". They call themselves "private military contractors". I assume there are European equivalents.

I thought: mercenaries were people that were equally comfortable defending the downtrodden against disctators as they would be torturing them in support of dictators, as long as they were being paid for it.

Actually: nothing in this podcast really changed that belief, however, the interviewee did point out that one can easily imagine reasonable situations where mercenaries are useful and noble; suppose an African country with a dysfunctional military, hiring mercenaries to defend themselves against some hostile rapacious invador, for example, America.

It's interesting that: Colombia is a big supplier of mercenaries and a Colombian mercenary can earn 4x an average Colombian salary. He's still earning possibly as little as 1/10th of what an American soldier costs.

Closing random thought: is a mercenary torturing an innocent civilian (or, for that matter, a guilty co-combatant) any less awful than US marine doing so out of some sense of nationalist fervor? Surely the actions are much more relevant than the underlying motivations?