War is on the way out.
Huh?
Really, war is old news.
What we have these days are police actions usually with troops sent in because Capital (in the guise of the UN or NATO or the USA) defines something going on in a nation state as a crime...or not in its interest.
Not only is war old news, but national military forces are old hat, too.
It is the time of the private, international police force recruited by, paid by, trained by, and sent in by private capitalists on behalf of international capital where needed.
The troops are recruited from here, there and everywhere.
We live in a global world.
Call them mercenaries if you want, but really, I think we are beyond that sort of stuff. These are private "armies," contractors for sell to the highest bidder... and the highest bidder is....
Almost nobody is invading their neighbor in order to seize and occupy their land (even Israel, these days, usually marches in and out as quickly as possible).
Drones coming buzzing in guided by whose knows who or from where.
This isn't your daddy's World War II, let alone World War I. Today's world war is really Global Action I.
War on Terror. Pshaw...
The multitude is everywhere and the Empire needs a highly technical, computerized, easily moved about force to police the mess of the alter globalization. The Empire is everywhere, but so are WE.
The old Third World is in the old First World, the old First World is in the Third World, and who the hell knows what ever happened to the old Second World.
This is the tale of "soldiers" from Colombia, hired by a private firm, and shipped to the Gulf to do "what." I think you know what.
Boldfacenews puts it this way:
The failure of the “rebels” to win in Syria has increased the worry of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) who, like the Saudis, are afraid, not of the “spreading of shia influence emanating from Iran” and corrupting their people, as they claim, but afraid of their own people, given the unrest I place like Bahrein and Kuweit, and uncertain of their ability to quell the storm when it comes.
Clearly Al Qaida and other mercenaries are nothing like a disciplined army to rely on. A little more professionalism is needed.
That is where globalism comes in handy: you can sit back in Abu Dhabi and order from as far away as South America, specifically Colombia.
The following is actually from the corporate media, but I took it from Axis of Logic (which sounds better then UPI).
By News Bulletin
UPI
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Colombia's defense ministry is alarmed about an exodus of top soldiers to the United Arab Emirates to join a highly paid U.S.-led mercenary force organized by Erik Prince, billionaire founder of the infamous security firm Blackwater.
ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates, June 7 (UPI) -- Colombia's defense ministry is alarmed about an exodus of top soldiers to the United Arab Emirates to join a highly paid U.S.-led mercenary force organized by Erik Prince, billionaire founder of the security firm Blackwater.
Prince, who sold Blackwater in 2010 after it was involved in killings and scandals in Iraq, went to Abu Dhabi, capital of the Persian Gulf federation, in 2011.
He signed on to form an 800-man battalion of mercenaries for what emirati officials termed "anti-terrorism operations" inside and outside the country.
But it's widely believed in Gulf security circles the force, being assembled under considerable secrecy by Prince's Reflex Responses registered in the emirates, will be used for undisclosed special operations for the seven desert emirates that make up the federation.
That's expected to include putting down "internal unrest" that might challenge the ruling families, as happened in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Yemen, and which is growing in Kuwait and Bahrain.
The Reflex Responses force, which is officially described in a contract leaked to the New York Times in 2011 as "independent of formal command and support structures throughout the United Arab Emirates," will have its own air wing, with fixed wing aircraft and helicopters, plus its own private navy.
The naval wing's tasks will primarily be "small boat operations ... maritime interdiction operations and securing oil delivery platforms."
The mercenaries have a custom-built high-security base in the desert where troops live and train.
U.S. military analyst Spencer Ackerman says Prince's new project "might run afoul of U.S. laws prohibiting citizens from training foreign militaries," which requires a government license. The State Department has not said whether Reflex Responses has one.
But it's unlikely that Prince, who sold off Blackwater amid a blizzard of adverse publicity over his men's excesses in Iraq where the company was accused of wantonly killing civilians, would embark on this new project without making sure he wasn't open to legal action, particularly if he found himself having to send troops to fight Muslims seeking sweeping democratic reform from rulers who are U.S. allies.
The Sunni Muslim Arab monarchies of the gulf are increasingly concerned about their future amid the political upheaval and conflict sweeping the Arab world, fueled, they claim, by Shiite Iran.
The emirates currently are trying 94 citizens for sedition and seeking to overthrow the political system. The defendants, including two prominent human rights lawyers, face a possible 15 years in prison.
But the over-riding security threat is widely perceived to be Iran, 100 miles across the gulf and which occupies several islands claimed by the Emirates.
Prince's mercenary force is made up largely of Colombian soldiers, including senior officers and men with a Special Forces background
There are also many veterans of Executive Outcomes, a South African security firm that became notorious in the 1990s for suppressing rebellions in mineral-rich African dictatorships and staging coups to gain control of such assets.
EO personnel included many veterans of Britain's Special Air Service and special operations units in South Africa's apartheid-era military.
Prince, an ex-U.S. Navy SEAL, is setting up his new force under a reputed $529 million contract with the royal family of oil-rich Abu Dhabi, the emirates' leader and economic powerhouse. The contract expires in 2015.
Analysts say soldiers from Colombia's 450,000-strong U.S.-trained military are held in high regard in the emirates and other gulf states because of their combat experience fighting leftist guerrillas and because they're not as expensive as Western veterans.
Colombian officials estimate 500 soldiers, including pilots of Black Hawk helicopters widely used in special operations, have gone to join Prince's force, where they earn $3,000 a month against $600 back home.
Bogota has complained to Abu Dhabi to stop hiring its best soldiers, so far without any apparent result.
"These are soldiers with a lot of experience, and it took a great effort to train them," Jorge Bedoya,Colombia's deputy defense minister, told The Financial Times.
The gulf monarchies are used to paying foreigners to do their dirty work. They have traditionally hired foreigners, mainly Pakistanis and Baluchis, to stiffen their armed forces.
Source: UPI
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