Shadow Wars: Private Military Companies, Great-Power Competition, and the Struggle for Influence in Africa

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Great powers increasingly face a severe demographic reckoning. Declining birthrates and aging populations have profound implications for states that depend on young workers to support retirees through pensions and healthcare systems. As the labor force contracts, fiscal pressures rise—and with them, strategic constraints. Militarily, a dwindling pool of able-bodied citizens hampers force generation, limiting the state’s capacity to project power through traditional means.

To compensate, great powers now rely more heavily on alternative instruments of hard power. Chief among them are private military companies (PMC), which allow governments to outsource military operations once reserved for uniformed forces. This outsourcing grants operational flexibility and political deniability. PMCs, in turn, must draw their ranks from regions with abundant young men—often targeting countries experiencing youth bulges, where large cohorts of young adults strain existing economic and political structures.

Historically, scholars have examined youth bulges primarily as domestic risk factors. This article, however, shifts the focus: we explore how youth bulges serve as recruitment grounds for PMCs employed by great powers. A healthy state maintains demographic balance—children, young adults, mature workers, and the elderly—each playing a functional role in a stable society. By contrast, a youth bulge—when a significant portion of the population falls between ages 15 and 29, or more narrowly, 15 to 25—disrupts this equilibrium and correlates with a higher probability of violence.¹

The Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa exemplify this demographic pattern. Many states in these regions suffer from youth bulges, paired with underemployment, inadequate education, and systemic corruption. These conditions breed frustration and mobilize protest movements. While youth bulges do not guarantee instability, their presence significantly increases the likelihood of political and social unrest—making them useful indicators for forecasting domestic crises.

Although large numbers of young workers could fuel economic growth if properly integrated, the reality often proves harsher. Market failures, ineffective governance, and resistance to reform—especially in patronage-based regimes—limit upward mobility and inflame popular discontent. Elites, intent on preserving their privileges, obstruct meaningful reform. As a result, youth bulges become incubators of unrest and, consequently, attractive pools for mercenary recruitment.

Great powers exploit this volatility. They identify and leverage unstable regions with surplus youth to fill the ranks of PMCs. Countries burdened by youth bulges offer strategic opportunities—both as recruitment hubs and as partners willing to trade manpower access for regime security. In this context, the youth bulge transforms from a local liability into a global asset.

History affirms this dynamic. In Rwanda, unemployed youth became perpetrators of genocide.² During the Arab Spring, young people led mass uprisings against corruption and poor labor conditions—mobilized by despair and demographic momentum.³ The convergence of a high youth population with deep political and economic frustration triggered the uprisings that swept across the Middle East and North Africa.⁴ Today, regions with the most pronounced youth bulges—most notably the Palestinian territories and the Democratic Republic of the Congo—remain persistent flashpoints of instability.⁵ These demographic pressures not only pose direct risks to political elites facing volatile youth populations but also create strong incentives for those leaders to collaborate with great powers. In doing so, they seek external mechanisms—often involving the recruitment of surplus youth into private military service—to defuse domestic tensions and avert potential violence.

Youth bulges not only endanger regimes but also create incentives for those regimes to cooperate with external powers. Faced with the threat of unrest, local leaders often welcome foreign involvement—especially when it helps export potential rebels and relieve domestic pressure. Thus, youth bulges serve a dual function: they destabilize weak states and furnish great powers with expendable manpower.

This article examines these interlinked phenomena: how youth bulges generate instability, how great powers capitalize on that instability through the use of PMCs, and how this process reconfigures the global security landscape.

Demographics and Youth Bulges in Africa and the Middle East

While much of the world now contends with declining birthrates and aging populations, the Middle East and Africa stand apart. These regions continue to experience elevated fertility rates alongside improving infant survival, producing sustained population growth and disproportionately young societies. In sub-Saharan Africa, the median age is just 19.2, with nearly 60 percent of the population under the age of 25.⁶ In Yemen and Iraq, that figure approaches half the population.⁷ These demographic dynamics stem from persistently high birthrates and improvements in public health that have sharply reduced childhood mortality.

Although fertility rates have declined modestly in recent years, the effects of elevated birthrates from two decades ago continue to swell the ranks of young adults. The result is a delayed demographic shock—large youth populations entering societies ill-equipped to absorb them economically or politically.

Youth bulges emerge during demographic transitions—when death rates fall due to improved healthcare but birthrates remain relatively high.⁸ While other regions have gradually moved through this transition, African and Middle Eastern states have not yet followed the same trajectory. As a result, youth bulges persist in states lacking both economic dynamism and political flexibility. This mismatch between demographic momentum and institutional capacity breeds frustration and instability.⁹

Research has consistently shown that the presence of youth bulges in low-growth economies increases the risk of civil war.¹⁰ Violence can erupt not only from actual decline but from the anticipation of decline. When young people perceive economic stagnation and diminishing opportunities, the resulting hopelessness can prove just as destabilizing.¹¹ Even in the absence of material collapse, the expectation of immobility—trapped in systems unable or unwilling to evolve—creates fertile ground for radicalization.

Youth bulges do not guarantee conflict, but they raise its probability, especially when economic growth lags behind demographic pressure.¹² Leaders who ignore popular expectations—particularly among the youth—do so at their peril. Fear, frustration, and the collapse of hope are often the precursors to revolutionary violence, and history shows that it is the young who most readily answer that call.

Economic Challenges: Unemployment and Underemployment

Even under favorable conditions, young adults often struggle to secure meaningful employment. In the presence of a youth bulge, however, the challenge intensifies. Oversupply in the labor market leads to fierce competition for limited jobs—delaying financial independence, marriage, and family formation. Unemployment and economic hopelessness emerge as primary destabilizers in such environments. Current estimates place youth unemployment at 12 percent in sub-Saharan Africa and over 25 percent in the Middle East.¹³

Ironically, the largest demographic groups often suffer the poorest economic outcomes. Those most numerous find themselves most marginalized. Studies confirm that the social cohorts constituting the majority of a population tend to have the worst economic prospects, while smaller, more established groups dominate positions of economic power¹⁴ This inversion of economic influence contributes to a combustible social structure.

Political regimes frequently respond with repression rather than reform. Disadvantaged youth face censorship, surveillance, and exclusion from political discourse.¹⁵ The state, more often than not, neglects their economic needs and aspirations.¹⁶ Where labor markets fail to absorb educated youth—particularly in Tunisia, Egypt, and Nigeria—the mismatch between skills and available jobs fuels disillusionment.¹⁷ Many educational systems in the region lack the capacity to prepare students for work in sectors with actual demand, further widening the gap between expectation and reality.

When conventional remedies—working harder, searching longer—prove ineffective, frustration deepens. This sense of futility becomes a potent predictor of instability.¹⁸

Economic exclusion, compounded by institutional failure, drives youth toward protest and, in some cases, political violence.¹⁹ Extremist organizations exploit this discontent. Boko Haram, for instance, capitalized on youth frustration in Nigeria to swell its ranks).²⁰ ISIS adopted a similar strategy, targeting economically disenfranchised young men across Africa and the Middle East.

Youth bulges, therefore, represent not only domestic liabilities but also international concerns. Fragile regimes, unable to integrate their young, face growing pressure to cooperate with external powers—seeking security assistance or economic partnerships to stave off unrest. In this context, great powers find both motive and opportunity: they offer support in exchange for access, often recruiting from these vulnerable populations to fill the ranks of private military forces and other outsourced instruments of hard power.

Political Instability and Social Unrest

Youth bulges are among the most consistent demographic indicators of political violence. A growing body of empirical research has demonstrated a causal link between a large youth population and increased risk of conflict. Henrik Urdal presents a foundational study showing that youth bulges significantly heighten the likelihood of internal armed conflict, riots, and terrorism.²¹ In a subsequent analysis, he found that when youth constitute more than 35 percent of a country’s population, the probability of armed conflict increases by 150 percent.²² Jonathan Last reinforces this pattern: in the 1990s, 80 percent of all civil conflicts occurred in states where over 60 percent of the population was under the age of 30.²³

Gunnar Heinsohn adds another layer of analytical precision, arguing that neither poverty nor religion is the primary driver of conflict.²⁴ Rather, he demonstrates that violence becomes statistically likely when more than 30 percent of the population falls between the ages of 15 and 29. In his study of 67 cases that met this demographic threshold, 60 experienced either civil war or mass killing. His conclusion is stark: while a youth bulge does not guarantee violence, it dramatically raises the probability—89 percent of cases with a youth bulge saw internal unrest. The correlation is undeniable. Demographics, particularly the age structure of a population, must be more systematically incorporated into political forecasting and early warning models.

The Arab Spring provides a powerful illustration of how youth bulges can destabilize entrenched regimes. In 2011, mass protests—led largely by disaffected youth—toppled authoritarian governments across the Middle East.²⁵ In Yemen, young demonstrators played a pivotal role in forcing President Ali Abdullah Saleh from power.²⁶ In Tunisia and Egypt, it was the youth who spearheaded anticorruption protests that ultimately precipitated regime change.²⁷ Even the wealthy Gulf states are not immune to youth-related pressure. In Kuwait, the average wait time for a young adult to receive state-provided housing—often a prerequisite for marriage—is thirty years.²⁸ Across the Middle East, youth frustration is both widespread and politically consequential.

Africa tells a similar story. Youth bulges have played decisive roles in both violent and nonviolent uprisings.²⁹ Algeria’s civil war unfolded amid a pronounced youth bulge.³⁰ In Sudan, a broad-based youth movement catalyzed the ouster of Omar al-Bashir, marking a rare instance of nonviolent regime change.³¹ The Rwandan genocide, as noted earlier, was driven in large part by mobilized, unemployed youth.³² High youth populations also fueled Boko Haram’s rise in Nigeria³³ and contributed to ongoing instability in Somalia.³⁴ The lesson is clear: when states fail to integrate their youth, the resulting frustration becomes a breeding ground for radicalization and revolt. African governments, like their Middle Eastern counterparts, face a pressing demographic imperative—one they ignore at their peril.

Social Challenges: Education, Health, and Public Services

Education traditionally serves as a pathway to economic mobility and family formation. But in regions experiencing youth bulges, that path is increasingly blocked. As the number of students rises, existing educational infrastructure becomes strained, diminishing the quality of instruction and access. In Africa and the Middle East, most governments lack the fiscal and institutional capacity to scale their education systems and housing supply to meet the needs of their growing populations. When young people invest years in schooling only to face unemployment upon graduation, the result is not just disappointment—it is radicalization.³⁵ Even the highly educated are not immune. As Lia notes, they can become fervent participants in opposition movements and susceptible to extremist ideologies.³⁶

Weber (2019) offers compelling evidence that the expansion of post-secondary education correlates with increased political violence—even when unemployment remains low.³⁷ The paradox is clear: higher education raises expectations for prosperity that emerging economies are often unable to fulfill. The greater the disparity between expectation and reality, the more likely frustration will be channeled into unrest.

Educational institutions in Africa and the Middle East are, by and large, underfunded and understaffed. While enrollment numbers have improved, quality has declined. The result is a generation of youth who, though nominally educated, lack the skills demanded by local labor markets.³⁸ This disconnect between credentials and capability breeds resentment and fuels antigovernment sentiment.

Some scholars urge a strategic pivot toward youth investment. Henrik Urdal calls for increased public spending targeted at young populations, arguing that such measures could mitigate the destabilizing effects of youth bulges.³⁹ But such prescriptions often collide with the realities of governance. As Fukuyama observes, many states in the region are institutionally fragile and riddled with corruption, ill-suited to the task of effective long-term planning.⁴⁰

Yet the demographic crisis also presents a strategic opportunity. States that successfully integrate their youth into the economy stand to benefit from a powerful labor force. But achieving that integration is no simple feat. More often, youth bulges aggravate unemployment and intensify the risk of political violence. The trajectory of Africa and the Middle East hinges on how governments respond to this challenge. If the young are empowered, the region can thrive. If ignored, the result will be deepening instability.

Moreover, there is a geopolitical cost to failure. States that mismanage their youth risk becoming recruitment grounds for foreign powers seeking inexpensive mercenaries to project influence abroad. In this way, domestic instability becomes a vector of international exploitation. We now turn to the role of mercenary forces in great-power competition.

The Use of Mercenaries in Great-Power Competition

In the wake of September 11, 2001, US strategic attention fixated on terrorism, sidelining the more enduring challenge of great-power competition. This era of unipolarity afforded Washington the luxury of focusing on asymmetric threats. With no near-peer rivals in sight, the United States pursued the Global War on Terror with broad latitude. Yet policy missteps during this campaign, including the overreach of the Bush Doctrine, eroded the legitimacy of the US-led liberal order. Casting the world into binary terms—good versus evil—left little room for nuance or dissent. By labeling Iran, North Korea, and Iraq as the “Axis of Evil,” and by expanding NATO while launching a unilateral invasion of Iraq, Washington alienated both adversaries and allies. What began as moral clarity morphed into strategic isolationism cloaked in exceptionalism.

As China surged and Russia reasserted itself, the post-Cold War lull gave way to a revived great-power contest⁴¹ In challenging the Western order, Moscow reached out to mid-level powers—India, key African states, and others—attempting to marshal diplomatic coalitions against American hegemony.⁴² Beijing followed suit, signaling that the twenty-first century would not be defined by uncontested American leadership.

Despite these shifts, the United States still held overwhelming military and economic superiority. But demographic pressures in both Russia and China prompted a turn toward nonstate proxies—paramilitary units and private military companies—as instruments of foreign policy. Ironically, mercenaries, once tools of the weak, became instruments of the powerful. For great powers, they offered low-cost, high-deniability alternatives to conventional troop deployments. Mercenary forces allowed states to wage war without the political or social costs of conscription or high-profile casualties.

Over the past two decades, private military firms have become fixtures on global battlefields. The United States pioneered their resurrection, driven by operational overstretch in Afghanistan and Iraq. Faced with a manpower crisis and unwilling to reinstate the draft, Washington embraced private contractors. It was the most politically palatable solution: cheaper than mobilizing reservists, less controversial than withdrawal, and more scalable than traditional force projection.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States demonstrated how privatized security forces could fill combat roles, secure supply chains, and guard installations—functions once reserved for uniformed personnel. What began as a stopgap for troop shortages evolved into a broader strategic asset. By transferring responsibility from government to contractors, the United States created a hybrid warfare model that blended state power with private enterprise. The result was not just operational flexibility, but a blueprint that other great powers would soon adopt.

Though privatization was initially adopted to address manpower shortages, it yielded broader strategic dividends. As Henry Kissinger observed in World Order, the central challenge for modern democracies is not a lack of resources but a lack of public will. Wealthy states like the United States possess the economic capacity to build and sustain large militaries, but post–World War II societies have grown averse to prolonged conflict.⁴³ This asymmetry—abundant material power paired with waning political endurance—has become a vulnerability.

America’s adversaries have learned to exploit this weakness. They need not win on the battlefield; they need only outlast the political patience of Washington. Victory lies in endurance. As Sean McFate argues, PMCs offer a workaround to this strategic dilemma by insulating the public from the human costs of war.⁴⁴ Casualties among contractors provoke far less media scrutiny and congressional oversight. By shifting the burden of combat deaths away from uniformed personnel, PMCs defer the moment when the public demands disengagement.

PMCs are also financially expedient. Unlike traditional forces, they operate on fixed contracts that relieve governments of long-term obligations such as pensions or medical care.⁴⁵ In both the short and long term, they cost less and attract less attention. This arrangement allows the United States—and similarly constrained democracies—to participate in extended conflicts without triggering political backlash.

Privatized security also offers geographic flexibility. PMCs can operate in regions where US military presence is restricted or prohibited, including Pakistan and parts of Africa.⁴⁶ As Zaynab Quadri notes, commercial military firms enjoy greater operational freedom and lower accountability than state forces, particularly under democratic regimes.⁴⁷ Anupam Siddhartha and Bharat Joshi identify two key drivers for PMC utilization: declining troop availability and conflict duration.⁴⁸ Bruce Stanley adds that rising global instability increases demand for such forces, especially when defense budgets shrink.⁴⁹

Yet this outsourcing model undermines democratic accountability. PMCs are not bound by the same legal and ethical frameworks that govern national militaries. They can violate norms of warfare with impunity, shifting responsibility from state to contractor.⁵⁰ This diffusion of responsibility allows states to wage war without the constraints of transparency or treaty compliance. The United States pioneered this model, but other aspiring powers were quick to follow.

Washington’s use of PMCs has incentivized strategic imitation. China and Russia now employ private security firms to pursue their geopolitical interests abroad.⁵¹ In Africa, American mercenaries protect critical resource routes from Chinese encroachment.⁵² Beijing, once a prospective client of Blackwater in Iraq, later collaborated with Russia’s Wagner Group.⁵³ Chinese PMCs now secure investments tied to the Belt and Road Initiative and protect nationals operating in volatile regions.⁵⁴ By 2022, over 7,000 Chinese security firms existed, with forty operating internationally—most concentrated in Africa.⁵⁵

Russia, though constitutionally barred from fielding PMCs, has embraced their use through deniable proxies. Since annexing Crimea and launching hybrid operations in eastern Ukraine in 2015, Moscow has deployed mercenary forces throughout Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America, though their primary theater remains Ukraine.⁵⁶ These groups, unregistered in Russia, grant the Kremlin plausible deniability. They extract resources, conduct irregular warfare, and enable Moscow to shape conflicts while avoiding formal accountability.⁵⁷

In the hands of modern great powers, mercenaries are no longer relics of a bygone era—they are instruments of strategic calculus.

International PMC Presence: An Empirical Overview

Table 1. List of private military countries legally established in each country. This table includes states possessing at least nine PMCs. (Data from Ulrich Petersohn, “Commercial Military Actor Database_V2,” Harvard Dataverse, 2022, https://doi.org/).

Since the 2003 Iraq War, commercial military enterprises have proliferated, particularly in North America and Africa. Ulrich Petersohn catalogs PMCs by home country in his Commercial Military Actor Database.⁵⁸ His dataset omits Chinese PMCs, whose numbers were discussed earlier, but it highlights a stark reality: while the Kremlin relies heavily on PMCs, Russian law prohibits their registration and operation. Despite this restriction, Petersohn identifies six PMCs headquartered in Russia—almost certainly an underestimate.

The dataset offers a global snapshot of PMC registrations. Though China and Russia are absent, the findings reveal striking patterns. The United States leads the world in legally established PMCs, followed by South Africa. The United Kingdom ranks third, trailed by Nigeria. These four states have more than twice as many PMCs as any other country. While Petersohn’s list records corporate headquarters, it does not track clientele. In Africa and Asia, commercially available firms cater to great-power clients seeking cost-effective alternatives to domestic forces. African PMCs, in particular, have expanded to combat terrorism and provide services to foreign patrons willing to pay competitive rates.

European firms are far less prominent. Only Britain, France, and Sweden host at least nine PMCs. Elsewhere, just six African states and three Middle Eastern states have significant numbers. Aggregating the data by continent reveals Africa’s dominance: 28 states host more than 315 private military firms—no other region comes close.⁵⁹

The United States stands alone in the West, its PMC industry unrivaled. China and Russia serve as its principal global challengers. Europe, with 166 firms, ranks a distant third, and its market is dominated by the UK, which accounts for more than half. France and Sweden maintain a notable presence, but other European economic powers continue to rely on national militaries rather than commercial alternatives.

The pattern is clear: states and regions grappling with insurgencies and security crises are more likely to host PMCs.

Table 2. Total private military companies registered by continent. (Data from Commercial Military Actor Database_V2)⁶⁰

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Figure 1. Private military companies legally registered by continent (Graph from Authors)

Africa leads the world in PMCs, followed by North America. Together, Africa and the United States account for more than half of all globally registered PMCs. Latin America has the fewest, with Asia only slightly ahead. The Middle East ranks fourth. Despite its large youth population, its vast energy wealth allows governments to contract American, European, Russian, and Chinese PMCs rather than rely on domestic manpower. With foreign mercenaries readily available, Middle Eastern states have little incentive to cultivate homegrown military enterprises.

Yet African and Middle Eastern states are not passive players. As global birthrates decline, their youth bulges make them anomalies—and valuable great-power partners.⁶¹ Rapid demographic growth strains economic absorption, breeding domestic instability. One solution is to foster local PMC industries, providing employment while outsourcing security functions. Wealthy states, grappling with their own demographic crises, have both the need and the resources to hire these firms.

Governments wield significant discretion in shaping this landscape. Since PMCs require business licenses, states can restrict or encourage their formation. While citizens can enlist in foreign PMCs, governments can impose recruitment limits and travel restrictions to curb external exploitation. Total control is impossible, but African and Middle Eastern governments retain substantial leverage to align PMC activity with national interests.

Historical and Contemporary Context

During the Cold War, both the United States and the Soviet Union relied on proxies to wage wars and conduct covert operations while avoiding direct confrontation.⁶² The United States armed and supported the mujahideen against Soviet forces in Afghanistan, just as the Soviet Union had backed the Viet Cong against the United States. Both superpowers went beyond supplying weapons, providing direct assistance through covert operations. The CIA routinely hired mercenaries for sabotage and hybrid warfare. After September 11, mercenaries became an even more critical tool for managing competition without triggering open conflict.

The Global War on Terror accelerated the privatization of warfare. PMCs emerged as viable alternatives to national militaries. The United States, for instance, deployed the Blackwater Group in Iraq and Afghanistan, reducing the number of regular troops while maintaining operational reach.⁶³ PMCs provided governments with services ranging from logistics in remote areas to direct combat. Just as important, they offered plausible deniability. Hiring states were not legally accountable for PMC actions, making them particularly attractive for great powers engaged in conflicts like Syria, Libya, and Ukraine.⁶⁴

PMCs have since become instruments of great-power foreign policy. Russia, for example, has used the Wagner Group across Africa and the Middle East to advance its geopolitical ambitions.⁶⁵ In Ukraine, Wagner allowed Moscow to distance itself from the group’s battlefield conduct. Following the sudden demise of Wagner’s leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Kremlin restructured the organization, refocusing its efforts on Africa under the new name Africa Corps.

Great-Power Competition and Strategic Use of Mercenaries

As previously noted, one of the chief advantages great powers gain from mercenaries is plausible deniability. But the utility of PMCs extends beyond that. They provide flexibility in gray-zone conflicts—neither outright war nor full peace—where weak governance and lawlessness allow nonstate actors to thrive.⁶⁶ Russia, for example, has deployed the Wagner Group in Syria and Libya to exert influence without committing official military forces, thus avoiding international condemnation and sanctions.⁶⁷ The United States likewise relied on PMCs in Afghanistan to ease the burden on its overstretched military and facilitate troop withdrawals.⁶⁸ In essence, mercenaries allow great powers to wage war while limiting both political and economic costs.

PMCs also offer operational efficiency. Avant notes that mercenaries can be deployed rapidly, bypassing bureaucratic hurdles that delay conventional military action.⁶⁹ Moreover, because casualties among mercenary forces are rarely reported, they do not erode domestic support for military engagements as quickly as traditional troop deployments.⁷⁰ This shields governments from the political fallout that typically accompanies extended foreign conflicts.

The use of mercenaries is a form of asymmetric warfare—an especially potent tool for revisionist powers seeking to challenge the global order without direct confrontation with the United States.⁷¹ Russia exploited this strategy in 2014, using mercenaries to seize Crimea without triggering a full-scale NATO response.⁷² Ironically, such tactics are reshaping the nature of conflict, shifting warfare away from conventional interstate battles toward a growing reliance on unconventional methods.

Mercenaries and Future Power Dynamics

As global competition intensifies and the world shifts from unipolarity to multipolarity, the use of mercenaries in great-power conflict is poised to expand. Rather than risk direct military confrontation, rising powers will increasingly rely on asymmetric tactics—including covert operations, sabotage, and mercenary deployments in gray zones—to weaken dominant states.

Mercenaries are becoming central to modern warfare, offering great powers a means to project strength while maintaining deniability.⁷³ As direct military engagements grow less viable, states will turn to nonstate actors to advance their strategic interests. The effectiveness of these tactics will shape the future of global order, particularly in the Middle East and Africa.

While Russia and the United States have been the most prolific users of mercenaries, China has begun to follow suit, leveraging PMCs to safeguard its investments under the Belt and Road Initiative.⁷⁴ This trend is especially pronounced in Africa, where Beijing’s reliance on mercenaries is steadily increasing.

Youth Bulges and Mercenary Recruitment

Most studies of youth bulges focus on their domestic effects—specifically, how surging young populations in economically strained states fuel unrest. Yet these analyses often overlook a key factor: population movement. While youth bulges can destabilize nations, they also serve as recruitment pools for terrorist groups, militias, and rebel forces. More critically, they provide a ready supply of mercenaries for international conflicts.⁷⁵ Some governments, recognizing this dynamic, tacitly encourage or even facilitate mercenary recruitment as a means of managing internal unrest and reducing the disruptive influence of unemployed young men.⁷⁶

For many, mercenary work offers both income and a means to support their families. Great powers exploit this, securing low-cost military manpower while sidestepping the political risks of deploying their own soldiers.⁷⁷ Russia, for example, has relied on mercenaries to wage war in Ukraine, avoiding mass mobilization—a move that would be deeply unpopular at home.

In states with large youth bulges and weak institutions, foreign powers find ample opportunities to recruit fighters unencumbered by the rigid military regulations that constrain conventional forces. This provides flexibility: mercenaries operate with fewer restrictions, and their employers bear less accountability for their actions than they would with regular troops. The result? Lower costs, fewer risks, and greater strategic utility for great powers willing to outsource warfare.⁷⁸

Recent conflicts underscore the growing role of mercenaries from youth bulge states and the strategic calculus behind their use. We now turn to two key examples.

The Wagner Group in Libya

The 2011 overthrow of Mu’ammar Gadhafi plunged Libya into civil war, fracturing the country into competing factions and warlords. One of the most powerful, Khalifa Haftar, has relied heavily on the Wagner Group to maintain his grip on eastern Libya. Wagner, in turn, has recruited extensively from African countries with youth bulges, particularly Sudan and Chad.⁷⁹ Wagner was just one of several PMCs operating in Libya as Middle Eastern states and Russia vied for influence in North Africa.

For Moscow, Wagner’s presence in Libya served a dual purpose: it allowed Russia to reassert influence in a country where it once held sway under Gadhafi, while avoiding direct military intervention that could provoke Western opposition. Moreover, by drawing recruits from African states with surplus labor, Wagner kept costs low—African mercenaries were far cheaper than Russian soldiers.⁸⁰ In effect, Russia used regional instability to advance its geopolitical objectives without the liabilities of deploying its own military forces.

Sudanese Mercenaries in Yemen

Yemen’s civil war erupted in 2014 when Houthi rebels seized the capital, Sanaa, triggering a proxy war between regional powers. Backed by Iran, the Houthis faced fierce opposition from Saudi Arabia, which led a coalition—including the United Arab Emirates (UAE)—to fight them. Rather than relying solely on its own forces, the UAE recruited thousands of Sudanese mercenaries, exploiting Sudan’s chronic instability and economic hardship).⁸¹ Wealthy Gulf states, with vast financial resources, have increasingly outsourced warfare, shifting the burdens of combat onto foreign fighters.

For the UAE, hiring Sudanese mercenaries was cost-effective. Their wages were a fraction of what Emirati soldiers would earn, and their losses carried no political cost at home.⁸² This strategy enabled the UAE to sustain its involvement in Yemen without eroding domestic support. By shifting the risks of war onto poorer nations with surplus labor, Gulf states minimized both financial and political liabilities—demonstrating yet another way mercenaries shape modern conflict.

Policy Recommendations

By lowering the direct costs of war, great powers can pursue geopolitical influence beyond what would be possible with their own militaries. Yet this practice also fuels instability in fragile states, often for economic gain. Russia’s use of the Wagner Group offers a stark example—Moscow has secured access to rare earth metals, diamonds, and gold by leveraging mercenaries in conflict zones. This exploitation weakens local governments, deepens poverty, and prolongs conflicts that might otherwise be resolved. With minimal domestic political costs, great powers face little pressure to end these wars. In fact, protracted conflicts often serve their strategic interests, explaining why mercenary-driven wars frequently derail ceasefires and peace negotiations.

The reliance on mercenaries also forces status-quo powers to react. The United States, for instance, must counter Russia’s use of private military forces to prevent Moscow from expanding its influence unchecked. While this competition avoids direct military confrontation, it raises the costs of maintaining global stability. Moreover, mercenaries often return home only to integrate into criminal networks or engage in political violence, providing revisionist powers with another tool to undermine order (Richards 2010). Washington must remain vigilant, ensuring that its allies are not destabilized by the mercenary networks that challenge U.S. interests.

The incentives for using mercenaries from youth-bulge states are strong. Revisionist powers exploit these populations to wage proxy wars, while status-quo powers do the same to maintain their positions. The trend of outsourcing war to poorer, unstable nations will likely intensify. Although little academic research has focused on how great powers systematically target youth bulges for mercenary recruitment, the logic is clear: countries with large unemployed male populations present opportunities for military labor at minimal cost. Leaders of these states, in turn, often tolerate such recruitment, as it reduces the risk of domestic unrest by providing economic opportunities for disaffected young men.

The United States must work more closely with African and Middle Eastern states to counter malign foreign influence through PMCs. This can be done in two ways. First, the US can expand military and training capacity-building programs to reduce foreign states’ dependency on foreign PMCs. Second, enhancing economic and diplomatic relations with these countries on equal footing will mitigate the effects of youth bulges, which removes the ability of foreign PMCs to recruit from these countries. It is important to recognize that our relations with small states has important consequences in the great power strategic competition.

Dr. Michael O. Slobodchikoff

Dr. Slobodchikoff, a professor of political science at Troy University, directs the Center for Eastern and Central European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies. He specializes in Russia’s relations with former Soviet states, treaty networks, international conflict, peace, and security, contributing extensively to academic literature and policy analysis. As an accomplished author and editor, he has published multiple books, peer-reviewed articles, and provides expert commentary on Russian geopolitics for international media outlets.

Dr. G. Doug Davis

Dr. Davis, a professor of international relations at Troy University, specializes in European security and Middle East affairs. With advanced degrees from the University of Arizona and the Pontificia Università Lateranense, he has published academic works in multiple languages and co-authored Cultural Imperialism and the Decline of the Liberal Order with Dr. Michael Slobodchikoff. His expertise extends to international development, banking, and diplomacy, including collaborations on NATO initiatives and scholarly engagements across Europe.

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