This article(click on the title please) is an eye-opening one about the growing role the mercenaries play in the US army thanks to the greedy plutocratic system now ruling in the States. The danger for US and the world is that, like Rome, the mercenary numbers will grow and soon the mercenary army won't be happy with just fighting and getting some handouts. Not that an all voluntary army, like the one existing in US, now is much better, but a mercenary army is much worse in that respect.
In Rome, when the citizen's army was replaced with a mercenary(Legions) army, soon they started to demand more and at last the whole political system was corrupted by use of the mercenary armies. The mercenaries started to sell their services to the highest bidder for controlling the population and supporting different political factions. The Rome's democracy was extinguished forever and changed into a dictatorship. Right now, people might laugh at this idea, as I am sure people were laughing in Rome when the mercenaries were just taking root and it looked a good idea to use expendable cheap lives instead of the citizens lives, but the empire's rulers should beware, it won't stop at this stage. They will gradually grow in numbers and force(as you can read in the article, they are now having their own heavy machinery and are even using air force), and will replace the Pentagon's regular army. Soon it won't look a bad idea at all to contract out the whole structure of the army to outside mercenary corporations. That will be the beginning of the end.
Small city states like Florence of the Renaissance period could use small mercenary armies without endangering their democracy, but empires can't do that. The rewards of the game in the empire is too high and sooner or later will attract the mercenaries into the internal squabbles of the powerful elites of the empire.
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