4 ms·

I'm not sure I understand you correctly. Neither a government in general nor particularly its army have only one core competency, and surely it's not "kill the

I'm not sure I understand you correctly. Neither a government in general nor particularly its army have only one core competency, and surely it's not "kill the bad guys". I'd actually say management is closer to their core competency. Which percentage of the army's personnel is shooting bullets, and which percentage of them are managing putting the bullets (and the troops) on the ground, analyzing where to put them, policing that they comply with what the government wants, recruiting, overseeing, intelligence, managing subcontractors and providers (gasoline, tanks, fences, uniforms, building construction, IT equipment, etc.)?

toyg 11y ago
These ancillary skills in management are developed in order to achieve well-defined objectives: overpower (i.e. shoot) the bad guys and conclusively win conflicts. You cannot apply them to mercenaries; even if you replicate the chain of command down to sergeant level or whatever, their incentives are fundamentally different: mercenaries have a fundamental interest in keeping the fighting going as long as possible, because they are paid to fight. A regular army is supposed to go out, win a conflict ("shoot the bad guys"), go home, get decorated, enjoy pensions and glory; that's the core mission, and its core competency is (or rather should be) to get that done in the shortest possible amount of time (or even not getting engaged in the first place). A mercenary only gets paid as long as there is an ongoing conflict involving a wealthy-enough client. He's not interested in ending the conflict; thinking you can police him in seeing it some other way is just deluded.
- harperlee 11y ago
  I agree with you on the conflict of interest that the mercenaries have, but I think that it extends to regular armies also. An army that doesn't fight is a budget that is claiming to be cut, and you can see that discussion taking place in several european countries. In the United States, however, they have wars to fight, and so the army and its space is a huge industry, with one client, the US government; and if there are no wars to fight, it will quickly collapse. There are in fact a lot of accusations that the military industry in the United States instigates action for that specific purpose. So they don't only keep alive the fire, as the mercenaries - they also push to start new ones! And I can tell you, the Army has more political force than mercenaries to do this.
  - toyg 11y ago
    I'm not disagreeing, but at least with regular armies those problems are indeed identified as problems. With mercenaries, it's just what they do.

toyg 11y ago

These ancillary skills in management are developed in order to achieve well-defined objectives: overpower (i.e. shoot) the bad guys and conclusively win conflicts. You cannot apply them to mercenaries; even if you replicate the chain of command down to sergeant level or whatever, their incentives are fundamentally different: mercenaries have a fundamental interest in keeping the fighting going as long as possible, because they are paid to fight. A regular army is supposed to go out, win a conflict ("shoot the bad guys"), go home, get decorated, enjoy pensions and glory; that's the core mission, and its core competency is (or rather should be) to get that done in the shortest possible amount of time (or even not getting engaged in the first place). A mercenary only gets paid as long as there is an ongoing conflict involving a wealthy-enough client. He's not interested in ending the conflict; thinking you can police him in seeing it some other way is just deluded.

harperlee 11y ago
I agree with you on the conflict of interest that the mercenaries have, but I think that it extends to regular armies also. An army that doesn't fight is a budget that is claiming to be cut, and you can see that discussion taking place in several european countries. In the United States, however, they have wars to fight, and so the army and its space is a huge industry, with one client, the US government; and if there are no wars to fight, it will quickly collapse. There are in fact a lot of accusations that the military industry in the United States instigates action for that specific purpose. So they don't only keep alive the fire, as the mercenaries - they also push to start new ones! And I can tell you, the Army has more political force than mercenaries to do this.
- toyg 11y ago
  I'm not disagreeing, but at least with regular armies those problems are indeed identified as problems. With mercenaries, it's just what they do.