As 2023 draws to a close, while it’s too early to call yet, a strong case has already been made to call it the year of the PMC or Private Military Contractor. Mercenary, in other words. Russia’s Wagner Group delivered Bakhmut to Russia, its last decisive victory over Ukraine, at incredible cost — as many as 25,000 Russians may have died in the fighting, with many more injured. At the height of the fighting, hundreds of mercenaries were dying per day. 

As extraordinary a thing that this was — mercenaries with the punching and staying power of an elite military unit — the best was yet to come. In the weeks and months after Wagner secured Bakhmut, Prigozhin, the group’s leader, got into a pissing match with the heads of Russia’s military and Ministry of Defense, staged a coup that a lot of people in Russia seemed to be very onboard with, and then backed down, before getting assassinated by, well, nobody knows (Putin). 

This piece looks at the phenomenon of PMCs. This was the year they delivered on everything they promise (quick, deniable returns), and also on everything they don’t (political instability and a lack of accountability). In other words, this was their year.

THE BIG STORY

2023, The Year of the PMC

This year has seen the resurgence in popularity and utility of the PMC, or mercenary.

2023 was the year of the mercenary.

Mercenaries — professional soldiers (presumably) selling their services to the highest bidder — have been around as long as civilization. Records exist of mercenaries being employed in Ancient Egypt; during the Second Intermediate Period, between the Middle Kingdom and New Kingdom, a period of  conflict between smaller dynasties and kingdoms, wars were common, and mercenaries employed widely. 1700-1550 B.C. is a long time ago — as far before the founding of Rome as we are from the first Crusade — and the idea of hiring warriors for a raid or fight or war probably goes back further. But that’s the earliest written record we have.

Much of our conception of what mercenaries do and who they are comes from three historical perspectives — the ancient Greeks, who were famous as mercenaries and fighters; the medieval Italians, whose frequent wars and employment of mercenaries gave rise to (among other things) Machiavelli’s The Prince, and the fighting that led up to Napoleon’s rise, when German mercenaries supported wars across the globe (including in the United States, which is why most people know of the otherwise somewhat obscure German principality of Hesse). 

In times of great ideological conflict — wars such as those prosecuted by Napoleon, or the world wars of the 20th century — mercenaries play limited roles, or none at all, their need for money overwhelmed by the requirements of states to defend themselves against destruction. Mercenaries are expensive, and in an existential struggle it becomes cheap for a country to mobilize citizens to defend it.

Absent those stakes, people become reluctant to serve. Throwing money at the problem of service can get expensive in the short run, with mercenaries in the U.S. earning on average $45k - $79k per year according to Glassdoor ($17k - $462k according to Comparably) — far more expensive to many developing world governments than paying for their own soldiers. In the long run, employing mercenaries is far less expensive when one takes lifetime obligations and medical care into account, and in places where the loyalty of soldiers can come into question, such as during civil war, having an outside group that’s dependent on one’s logistical infrastructure but with none of the historical baggage can actually be advantageous.

The relative affordability of mercenaries, plus the relatively low stakes of warfare (up until very recently — the stakes seem to be rising, with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine), plus the surplus of skilled soldiers in the West (and the need in Russia for unskilled assault troops to soak up Ukrainian bullets and artillery) and the chronic political instability of authoritarian countries have all conspired to make the current world a very, very good one for mercenary groups and businesses to sell their services to anyone who can afford them and does not conflict with their host nation’s explicit interests.

The global value of PMCs today, according to a recent BBC article, is somewhere above the of $224 billion they were worth in 2020 (but below the $457 billion they’re expected to be worth by 2030). According to Wikipedia, the portion of that business based in America comes to 14 companies, some of which (Academi, Triple Canopy) themselves belong to larger groups. This world is murky, disinterestedly regulated, and difficult to define or pin down — even more so than cryptocurrency, which amounts to a kind of speculative asset. 

Where will PMCs be in the future? So long as the type of no-holds-barred war that’s active in Ukraine today does not spread further into Europe, PMCs will continue to be in demand around the world, and their value will likely grow. If, however, the war Russia started spreads — and it has already spread, in some sense, now that proxies of Russian ally Iran attacked Israel — the bottom could drop out of the mercenary market entirely. In WWIII, there won’t be any room for contractors. Everyone will be compelled to wear a country’s uniform or sit on the sidelines, and for the losers, the stakes won’t be unemployment.

In the meantime, the wars of the present require mercenaries and mercenary leaders. As Wagner Group and Prigozhin proved, there are benefits (Bakhmut, deniability) and costs (an abortive but surprisingly successful coup) to employing PMCs instead of growing one’s military. It’s a delicate balancing act, but countries appear to have limitless willingness to pay big money to keep on the high wire.

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