Rise of mercenary outfits during the cold war

Khanzeer

Banned
The cold war saw a host of small scale and civil wars as we all know.
In many of them UN intervened, however WI UN never had that function and western and socialist powers had propped up mercenary outfits to be hired by smaller nations to further their interests ?
How would that affect the cold war and third world conflicts ?
 
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Most likely result would be a modern form of armed colonization. Here's why. If a developing nation is unable to pay their outfit of choice, then there are a couple possibilities for what could happen. One, outfit switches sides; however in an ideological conflict, this is unlikely. Two, another nation foots the bill in exchange for economic or resource concessions in country. Three, developing nation pays outfit in material instead of in cash: this could be resources, goods, or land. Or four, outfit overthrows local government and rules nation as essentially a Margraviate or, conversely, becomes an overseas territory of the nation from which the outfit hails.
 
I recall having discussions on other forums regarding using mercenary armies to operate in the African wars - although this may have been more in the 90s than cold war.

We even determined the ideal APC - Turkish made M113s (ACV-15) with BMP3 turrets as these were cheap, amphibious, Impervious to RPG - 7 and could deal with T55 style threats if necessary using the 100mm Missile / gun system
 

Khanzeer

Banned
Can all 3rd world interventions even by superpowers be in guise of private militaries?
Even socialist bloc can use them and will be crewed by their regular military personal and can operate sophisticated weaponry but will come with plausible deniability
 

Deleted member 1487

The cold war saw a host of small scale and civil wars as we all know.
In many of them UN intervened, however WI UN never had that function and western and socialist powers had propped up mercenary outfits to be hired by smaller nations to further their interests ?
How would that affect the cold war and third world conflicts ?
I mean technically Executive Outcomes was created during the Cold War.
Thing is the problem with having mercenary armies in the Cold War is there wasn't a catalyst. Nation-states wanted control over military force and even if they didn't directly control them they were 'in pocket' in some way rather than an independent force. Modern PMCs are the result of the end of the Cold War in which everyone cut their military and intelligence services to the bone, so there was a wave of highly experienced and capable military/intelligence men looking for work, so turned to PMCing as a way to pay the bills, as that was their only skill. As the Cold War ending also meant a lot of instability around the world there was a huge market for them to work and after the first groups showed it was viable then the industry built up as government discovered they were the perfect vehicle for foreign policy minus having to actually declare war or send their own uniformed (or not) people into harm's way.

The Cold War was a power play between states so it is really hard to see them endorse the use of organizations which represent the breakdown of state power. The UN still had a purpose during the Cold War, even just as a prestige vehicle for world powers, so there was real incentive to use them to regulate global problems rather than allow the use of PCMs to do so. The Communist states would have had a field day in global propaganda if 'capitalist' military companies were contracted to do any sort of military work.

That said it is arguable whether local allied groups in Southeast Asia could have been called mercenaries during the Vietnam period, so technically we did have some IOTL.
 
The cold war saw a host of small scale and civil wars as we all know.
In many of them UN intervened, however WI UN never had that function and western and socialist powers had propped up mercenary outfits to be hired by smaller nations to further their interests ?
How would that affect the cold war and third world conflicts ?

See above plus note if used offensively PMC are designated as unlawful combatants under international law and criminals under enough domestic laws to make it not worthwhile.

The UN intervenes to keep the peace not to fight a war. So basically the UN agrees to use common funds to hire troops from volunteer nations to act on behalf of everyone with specific ROE.

If you are talking about smaller nations using mercs to further their interests.

The problem with the notion is anywhere of interest to anyone actually has access to much better than mercenary forces from their great power sponsors anyway. Francophone africa has the Legion, British interests have SAS, Contract officers, US interests various special forces and contract officers the Communist bloc had Cuba at one point, and all come with air support and a funding package to help train your own loyal troops.

And having light armoured ( seriously Adnans are rated vs 14.5mm mg not RPG) vehicles requires a support and logistic infrastructure most countries do not have and those that do have their own armies who can be formed of cheapish patriotic conscripts rather than expensive not terribly loyal foreigners.

There are mercenaries but these tend to be either highly trained specialists ( like aircraft crew and maintenance personnel). command staff or bodyguard/rentathug types.

What there are not is Condottiere captains with large private armies.
 
Basically just Africa. And they’d probably be bought by local leaders with US or European money, not by the superpowers themselves.
 

Khanzeer

Banned
^^
True but there are pros too [ in the most cynical sinister diabolical way]
1 PMC can be paid in kind i.e plunder looting your enemies territories and civilians
2 PMC can be used in ethnic cleansing, demographic shifts and to target civilians without superpowers getting their hands dirty
3 use of proxy military companies that can secure natural resources of 3rd world nations will be beneficial to the bigger powers without looking like colonialism
4 smaller nations can have some say in making rival mercenaries companies compete for contracts without adhering to one specific ideology
5 for superpowers less incentive to transfer technology or train local forces ensuring their dependency on foreign mercenaries
 
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