links -> thanks

Thanks to Kiara for the link on MPs.  (And I 
guess your husband will be happy to hear that 
he's a "Somebody"!).  ;) 

Thanks to Alan for the excellent links from 
Sandline, MPRI, etc. The geocities link and the 
one on Sandlines stance on regulation were 
both very topical. I can forsee the possibility of 
UN monitored Private Military Corporations 
(PMCs). They seem to be setup very much like 
any other corporation (a management team, 
detailed project planning, clear guidelines on 
payment and what missions they accept, etc). I 
can see them doing good service where 
countries don't want to commit their own 
troops because no direct strategic interest is 
threatened or because the conflict zone is too 
hot or where it isn't felt that their country can 
cut the mustard (I refer to some third world 
countries and others like Canada who are 
getting feebler by the day). PMCs can provide 
up to date muscle with lots of experience to act 
as cadre and trainers and to act as small spec 
ops or strikers to assist local militaries. 

Reading the MPRI site, I see they get all their 
major international efforts approved by Dept of 
State. So if you had a NAC-homed PMC, they'd 
probably do the same thing - just make sure 
the NAC is happy with any given contract. This is 
good for both parties, the NAC would get to 
reinforce places like colonies or allies without 
diverting its own highly skilled forces. And it 
keeps them out of some potential political 
situations and they don't even have to pick up 
much (or any) of the bill. A win win situation. 

Presumably, if you had PMCs operating under 
Guild Auspices, and the Guild agreed upon by 
international convention, then you'd have Guild 
(or Guild & UN) observers making spot checks 
and accompanying missions to verify 
compliance with international rules of armed 
conflict and to insure the mercs were doing the 
job for their employers in a manner consistent 
with the Mercenary Code(c). This is actually 
something mentioned (though not in the 2183 
context) in the Sandline article. 

Very cool. I've also had John A grant me 
permission to post his article on mercs on 
stargrunt.ca. It was a very neat piece as well 
and offered some very good thoughts on the 
matter. 

Tomb. 
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Thomas Barclay
Instructor, CST 6304 (TCP/IP programming for the Internet)
kaladorn@fox.nstn.ca 
http://fox.nstn.ca/~kaladorn/CST6304
http://stargrunt.ca/tb/CST6304
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