Couple of items of interest...
The Addition to the Geneva Convention of 20 August, 1949, Article 47 of Protocol I, in its opening sentence states, "A mercenary shall not have the right to be a combatant or prisoner of war." In essence they are an illegal combatant and denied the protection of the Geneva Conventions.
On 20 October, 2001, we have the United Nations International Convention Against the Recruiment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries, Article 2 makes it an offence to employ mercenaries. This has been ratified by 35 nations. But has not been signed by the People's Republic of China, France, India, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the US.
Basically, you can't be a mercenary because if you are captured, you can be shot out of hand. The UN doesn't approve of PMCs because they consider them to be mercenaries, although many nation-states do use PMCs, and if they are used in foreign countries, there are agreements that the hiring country makes that either gives them immunity (State Department's use of PMCs as security) or requires the hiring country to guarantee the behaviour of the PMC.
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The reason that the American Army does so well in wartime, is that war is chaos, and the American Army practices chaos on a daily basis.
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