I recently watched this on Youtube. It's a very interesting topic, and makes one wonder if what happens in the upcoming CoD game could happen in real life.

Short Answer, no.

There is a reason they rarely have anything heavier than APCs. Because I can think of a whole lot of times I might need a bunch of guys with guns. How often will I need F-22s?

Mercenaries have been a part of warfare since people have had currency to hire extra fighters, and back in the iron age, it wasn't uncommon for massive portions of any army to be made up of mercenaries. None of that is really anything new; it's just that it's becoming trendy to start paying attention to it. You name a war and large groups of mercenaries are present.

I'm pretty much working on a darkly comedic and over-the-top RP that has the premise that nations are second to massive corporations and mercenaries are pretty much the most viable occupation in the world, so it's not like it's the most unheard of idea that people are worried that PMC groups are going to become more powerful than nations, but good luck finding one that's going to try to try to take over a country without being paid to do it. They're a business, first and foremost. It's a lot easier and cheaper to focus on fighting a war on behalf of a country and let them deal with the logistics of governance and the PR game. They only make money if somebody is fronting the bill, which is exactly why PMC groups can afford all the top of the line hardware that your average soldier can't dream of obtaining. If one decided that they wanted to overthrow and rule a country, even if they did somehow out-battle and defeat that country's military (not really an easy feat, considering that the only countries worth taking over probably have more funding and military power than the PMCs will ever hope to have, and there's a very real threat of that country's government freezing that PMCs assets and screwing them financially), then they have to deal with the threat of a civil uprising and inherit all the problems that that country faces just running the damn thing, and as soon as people find out that there's a rogue PMC group, good luck to them ever trying to get work again.

They have nothing to gain and everything to lose if they, according the end of the video, "Decide to stop taking orders."

Oh, and then there's things like they probably wouldn't be able to leave whatever country's airspace that hired them because if they did have air assets, they'd be intercepted, and if they tried to take an airport out, they'd probably have their passports revoked. Really, it's nothing more than a fun fictional idea with no practical weight behind it. Once again, their success and wealth depends entirely on nations bankrolling them. They'd never do something so stupid as to lose that support.

And if for whatever reason they were hired by another country to attack another country, than that's still country A declaring war on country B, so nothing changes that way.

Short answer, no. Longer answer, not anymore; mercenary armies were the norm up until about the 17th century, when technology and theory finally caught up and national standing armies became more strategically effective. In today's world, wars are won by soldiers, but fought with equipment, and no private company will ever outspend the government that prints their money. A single merc is probably armed **much** better than a single soldier. That's nice. But they can't afford to airlift in heavy machinery to build a C-5 landing strip in the jungle using materials from a floating warehouse housed in a nuclear cargo freighter 15,000 miles from home, with first-world port agreements.... The world has made war very, very prohibitively expensive, and that's one of the best things we could've ever done, collectively. There's no possibility of gain, for a supercorp-military to go rogue. No prospect of victory and nothing to win anyway. Call of Duty is a game.

There's a few things stopping mercenary corporations from taking over the world. Chief of which is that, at the end of the day, your standard government is simply a tax-funded security firm and mercenary organization. The only difference is that governments want power more than they want money. And governments are generally publicly owned.
Arguably, by the time a private company outguns the government, they ARE the government. It would just be funded slightly differently. Maybe. It's possible that such a company might just decide to fund everybody who uses your services. Oh and for PR reasons you might try to have people decide the terms of use through voting or something. And then you're back to square one.

Mainly what the others have already said, there's no financial gain.

The only argument I can see somewhat working is if a company wanted to start the war and simply hired mercenaries to be the guns for it. But even then it doesn't really add up cause business make money by making and selling products, not by having a lot of guns and taking places over. Maybe since corporations can work in the trillions at times they could end up having a corporation war (assuming it could ever be hid from the government), but that's hardly the same as merc's going rogue and taking over things on their own.

I see your points. But war is profitable. Just look at Germany after the Nazis started WWII. During the war the economy was very strong. Same goes for America, Japan, and England. But other than food for thought, the idea might make some good RPs on here.

Jett Ryu said
I see your points. But war is profitable. Just look at Germany after the Nazis started WWII. During the war the economy was very strong. Same goes for America, Japan, and England. But other than food for thought, the idea might make some good RPs on here.

That's because the war opened up a ton of new jobs for people to make the weapons and such, which meant less unemployment and more working people.
Stuff like that isn't relevant to mercenaries, they only care for the money going directly to them for fighting. While the government's wealth is internally dependent on their citizens and how well off and employed they are.

Magic Magnum said
That's because the war opened up a ton of new jobs for people to make the weapons and such, which meant less unemployment and more working people.Stuff like that isn't relevant to mercenaries, they only care for the money going directly to them for fighting. While the government's wealth is internally dependent on their citizens and how well off and employed they are.

Ohhh I see. When put that way, I can see why PMCs get a bad rap, and make great villains.

Jett Ryu said
I see your points. But war is profitable. Just look at Germany after the Nazis started WWII. During the war the economy was very strong. Same goes for America, Japan, and England. But other than food for thought, the idea might make some good RPs on here.

Other than what Magic said, the boom of a war is followed by a bust. As soon as a country doesn't need to pump out billions in equipment, the jobs are gone and don't forget most countries had to repay war bonds and go back to a peace time economy where there weren't enough jobs. In the US, for instance, there was a very real fear of the country sliding back into a depression. Japan and Germany ended up receiving massive amounts in aid because nobody wanted them to go back to conditions that would breed divtators and fear of Soviet influence.

Jett Ryu said
Ohhh I see. When put that way, I can see why PMCs get a bad rap, and make great villains.

It's also not exactly great to think of mercenaries as strictly villains. Just because they are motivated by high pay doesn't mean they necessarily have no morals or do good work. Sure, some get in hot water for doing awful shit, but never forget they're former soldiers for the most part and just because someone waves a shitload of money in their face doesn't mean they are obligated to take the contract.

It also doesn't do your company any good if you're known for taking jobs from warlords who kill innocent people. It's why Blackwater making the news for doing awful shit was huge; it would not have become headline news if it was the norm. Yes, a lot of mercenaries do shitty, awful things. So do soldiers. Butwe as a society like to think that all soldiers are doing their jobs based off similar noble principles like we say about WWII vets. We think corporations are evil and amoral, so someone who is at war for a good pay check with no nationalistic loyalty must be a thug, right? Not a good line of thought. Nothing is ever black and white.

Dervish said
It's also not exactly great to think of mercenaries as strictly villains. Just because they are motivated by high pay doesn't mean they necessarily have no morals or do good work. Sure, some get in hot water for doing awful shit, but never forget they're former soldiers for the most part and just because someone waves a shitload of money in their face doesn't mean they are obligated to take the contract. It also doesn't do your company any good if you're known for taking jobs from warlords who kill innocent people. It's why Blackwater making the news for doing awful shit was huge; it would not have become headline news if it was the norm. Yes, a lot of mercenaries do shitty, awful things. So do soldiers. Butwe as a society like to think that all soldiers are doing their jobs based off similar noble principles like we say about WWII vets. We think corporations are evil and amoral, so someone who is at war for a good pay check with no nationalistic loyalty must be a thug, right? Not a good line of thought. Nothing is ever black and white.

I know that the world is not black and white. Everyone has motivations. Kevin Spacey's character has a monologue in the Advanced Warfare reveal:

Jonathan Irons said "Democracy? Democracy? Democracy is not what these people need – hell, it’s not even what they want. America has been trying to install democracies in nations for a century, and it hasn’t worked one time. These countries don’t have the most basic building blocks to support a democracy. Little things like we ought to be tolerant of those who disagree with us. We ought to be tolerant of those who worship a different god than us. That a journalist ought to be able to disagree with the President! And you think you could just march into countries based on some fundamentalist religious principles, drop a few bombs, topple a dictator, and start a democracy?! Give me a break. People don’t want freedom. They want boundaries, rules. Protection. From invaders and from themselves. People need a leader who could give them both the support and the constraints to keep chaos at bay. You give them that, and they’ll follow. And that’s where I come in."

Jett Ryu said
I see your points. But war is profitable. Just look at Germany after the Nazis started WWII. During the war the economy was very strong. Same goes for America, Japan, and England. But other than food for thought, the idea might make some good RPs on here.

The broken window fallacy actually comes into play here. Whatever gains are temporary, and often purchased on borrowed cash, unless you seriously molest other nations to get things done or strip mine your own civil rights.

The only reason the Nazi state of Germany managed such a turn-around is because they already had a powerhouse industry ready and waiting to get to work. With the fascist government they were fully capable of taking advantage of that.

Then, there's the States, usually the poster child, for this sort of thing. Well, the civil war and the war of 1812 didn't boost their economy. World War 2 only boosted the economy because their competition was shut down. (There was no car industry in Japan and Germany by the end of world war 2 for example. America was only really competing with itself.) Since then further wars have only really cost America more money.

Then, the military industrial complex. It's not self-sustaining without either having clients to sell your weapons to, or of course... Using them... In very expensive wars.

As for the broken window fallacy: Sure, if a broke a window, the shop owner would have to pay to replace it, giving a window maker a job. However, if I bought something at that shop instead, the window remains in use, and the shop owner can now expand his business instead, or buy some other product himself.

Either way, money still flows, but in war, things are only lost, nothing is really gained save perhaps the loss of a potential competitor, and in expanding the military industrial complex.

EDIT

Nowadays, I should define that as in nowadays. Back in "ye olde days" wars could still be fought for acquisition of resources, territory, and manpower. Nowadays, resources are globalized, territory is largely irrelevant save in certain hot zones and taking more is considered by the rest of the world to be a very big no no, and manpower is largely irrelevant in a world with 6.5 billion people.