Roman Mercenaries vs. American PMCs

Many parallels have been drawn between the United States and the Roman Empire. Both are considered hegemons of their day, have utilized a democratic-republican political structure, and have spread their influence over the territory they conquered and became engaged with militarily. The similarities are striking. As history has determined, however, the Roman Empire would eventually fall away and become defunct. Certainly there were markers that signaled this collapse and foretold of the end of the hegemony. It’s possible that these same markers may exist today in the context of the United States. It’s possible that the U.S. may be headed down the same road that brought about the ruin of one of the greatest powers of all time.

One of the major indicators of Rome’s faltering self-control was its heavy reliance upon contracted soldiers called “Foederati,” what we would now refer to as mercenaries. This trend began much earlier, however, in Roman military history. As Roman citizens serving in the army (soldiers called legionaries) advanced the borders of the Empire and took over neighboring territories, they subsumed those who were living in those areas into the Roman Empire. While these peoples were now classified under the sovereignty of Rome, they were not granted citizenship, but rather their lands were treated as a blend of a colony and that of a province. Because it became more difficult to maintain the increasing land mass of the empire, the military began to split into two distinct entities: the auxiliaries, which were noncitizen soldiers contracted from the province areas, and the legionaries, which were citizen soldiers contracted from the heart of the empire. In both cases the soldiers were taught Roman civics, learned Latin, were educated in Roman customs, and were controlled by Roman politicians and generals. However it was the deviation from this this recruitment practice that eventually saw the end of the Roman Empire.

The change in recruitment stemmed from a change in the Roman belief of which type of people embodied the qualities of a truly fierce soldier. Roman writers, poets, and even military generals began to see the men who they fought as the most deadly warriors (Frye). It was an exaltation of barbarism, much the same way Americans glorify pirates today with movies, toys, and books. This is where the shift began in terms of the composition of the Roman military. Caesar was known for employing Germanic barbarians as mercenaries to aid his conquests. He was saved a number of times by his contracted mercenaries, most notably at Alesia and Vercingetorix. The emperor Augustus formed his own personal guard entirely of German mercenaries called the costodes. By the mid-second century, merely 1% of the Roman army was composed of legionaries from Italy (Frye). The Roman use of auxiliaries and mercenaries became the crutch upon which the empire leaned.

These Germanic mercenaries quickly realized that it was more profitable to plunder Roman cities than to remain in the empire’s employ, just as the Romans realized that militarizing the most uncivilized of those your army has defeated probably wasn’t a recipe for success. Without adequate protection for its vast territory, Rome was raided several times by the same Germanic invaders that it had hired. Finally the city of Rome was sacked and burned and the empire as it was formerly known was obliterated.

Today the U.S. also uses mercenaries to accomplish many of its military goals. However in an attempt to modernize and professionalize the industry, mercenaries are now called Private Military Corporations or PMCs. These are companies like Xe Services LLC. (formerly Blackwater USA) and DynCorp, which specialize in military training procedures, battle tactics, and security among other things. Many of these private sector soldiers are former U.S. military personnel who were placed out of the armed forces because of the decrease in the overall size of the military. Moreover, in 1989 the U.S. military comprised 2.1 million uniformed service members, whereas in 2003 it was composed of only 1.4 million (Wedel). The primary decrease in this large number of service members was also partly the cause of the increase in American use of PMCs.

After the Cold War had ended, the U.S. did not feel the need to have such a massive army and did not any longer expect to fight another highly trained modern military. Modern day asymmetric warfare is not especially suited to the U.S. armed forces and requires a certain flexibility and fast-moving kinetic action that the generic U.S. soldier is hard pressed to handle. Another reason for the reliance upon PMCs is that, “In the U.S., reluctance to incur casualties and costs, a desire to avoid foreign entanglements, and the armed forces' limited ability to deploy for low-level missions have led to a growing reliance on PMCs to perform military duties.” (Private Military Corporations). In fact the U.S. is so reliant upon PMCs that in Iraq in 2007, there were 180,000 U.S. employed private military personnel (of which 21,000 were American), while there were only 160,000 U.S. troops (Wedel). This situation seems to prone to a precarious trade-off for the U.S. While private contractors allow the U.S. to intervene where it may not have been otherwise politically able to, to interface with the local populations of foreign countries where the people may harbor anti-American sentiments, and to have on hand a military group that can respond much faster than U.S. military personnel could, it does present a situation where the U.S. is employing mostly foreign nationals to execute its military ambitions. This means that with all of those aforementioned benefits comes an abdication of control on the part of the government. As we have seen in Rome, an abdication of military power and responsibility can have serious consequences.

There are a few key reasons why it is unlikely, however, that the U.S. could succumb to a collapse similar to that of the Roman Empire, at least in the foreseeable future. Firstly, the reasons for the American employment of mercenaries are not quite the same as Rome’s were. The U.S. does not hire PMCs in large because they are deemed to be “better” warriors. If America wanted to it could produce more capable and field-specialized soldiers, it certainly could. The U.S. also does not hire members of Al-Qaeda or other anti-American terrorist groups to carry out its military objectives, whereas the Romans hired their enemies upon seeing their capability of delivering damage to their own armies and cities. Secondly, The United States has the largest military in the world. PMCs are not replacements for American soldiers, at least not on nearly a significant enough scale to threaten U.S. defense capability at home. It is not more profitable for PMCs to turn on the U.S. because they would the utterly destroyed if they ever tried. Thirdly, America is not expanding its borders to the point where it can no longer control its territory. America is not actually expanding it’s borders at all. The wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya are wars of intervention and not of national expansion. Regardless, the state system today would not allow the U.S. to expand as did Rome so long ago.

While America and Rome seem to be very similar, there exist important distinctions that separate the two. While the use of mercenaries signaled a collapse for the Roman Empire, American usage of PMCs signals a turn to alternative military strategy to accomplish national goals. As such, it is highly unlikely that the U.S. can fail anytime soon, at least in the same way that Rome did. In any event, the murky history of mercenaries does strain credulity when thinking about their effectiveness and safety in modern day warfare.

Works Cited

Frye, David. “Rome’s Barbarian Mercenaries.” Historynet.com. Historynet, 3 May 2007. Web. 7 Dec. 2011.

"Private Military Corporations." Issues & Controversies On File: n. pag. Issues & Controversies. Facts On File News Services, 14 Mar. 2003. Web. 7 Dec. 2011.

Wedel, Janine. “The Shadow Army.” boston.com. The Boston Globe, 30 Sept. 2007. Web. 7 Dec. 2011.