Mercenaries have been employed as auxiliaries since early times, but in the post-1945 world they have operated, almost exclusively, in weak Third World countries. From Columbia to the Congo, Angola to Papua New Guinea, Cambodia to Nicaragua, they have appeared: training the drug cartel armies, assisting rebellions or civil wars, acting as the agents of the major powers. In the Congo crisis (1960-1965) they earned an especially unsavory reputation for greed, brutality and racism; it is a reputation that has stuck to the mercenary and on the whole justly. During the 1990s a new phenomenon has emerged in the form of the mercenary corporations such as Executive Outcomes or Sandline. These corporations offer a range of military expertise and weaponry, have the covert support of governments in the countries from which they come and are rapidly becoming a power to themselves, ultimately far more dangerous than the individual freebooters of the past.

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About the author

Guy Arnold is a freelance writer who lives in England.

Bibliographic Information

Book Title: Mercenaries
Book Subtitle: Scourge of the Developing World
Authors: Guy Arnold
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-27708-7
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan London
eBook Packages: Palgrave Political & Intern. Studies Collection, Political Science and International Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited 1999
Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-312-22203-1Published: 25 November 1999
eBook ISBN: 978-1-349-27708-7Published: 26 November 1999
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIII, 198
Topics: History of Military

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Table of contents (16 chapters)

Front Matter

Back Matter

About this book