Starcraft Sweden Political Tournament

The French Foreign legion was created in the 1830s as a way to put troublemakers to good use. Composed of failed revolutionaries from all over Europe, brigands, disbanded Swiss and Germanic mercenaries and the like, who would fight for France but forbidden to fight in France's Metropolitan territory (Only exemption was the retaking of Orleans by the FFL in 1871 due to the Germanic invasion).

Even if some legionnaires have a murky background, they're not former criminals and murderers, since the legion conducts extensive background checks via Interpol nowadays. They wear a French uniform (thus protected by the Geneva Convention), are commanded by French officers, fight for France, and France only. The French Foreign Legion deploys and fights as an organized unit of the French Army. This means that as members of the armed forces France these soldiers are not mercenary soldiers per APGC77 Art 47.e and APGC77 Art 47.f.

They certainly don't make a lot of money and after serving in the Foreign Legion for three years, a legionnaire may apply for French citizenship. He must be serving under his real name (FFL lets you enlist with a pseudonym), must no longer have problems with the authorities, and must have served with "honour and fidelity". Furthermore, a soldier who becomes injured during a battle for France can immediately apply for French citizenship under a provision known as "Français par le sang versé"
Historically, The bulk of the French foreign legion is made up of Germans (The number of former Wehrmacht/Waffen SS soldiers seeking redemption was staggering), Belgians, Italians and Spaniards.

Even today, most legionnaires come from these countries I just mentioned.
Those countries have armed forces but some individuals don't join their national armed forces because they want to fight, they're warriors and joining the Bundeswehr or Belgian armed forces mainly consists of staying in Germany, Belgium etc… with the thumb up your ass, drilling all day and never engaging in combat (Aka 90% of what soldiering actually is), same goes for Italy or Spain. They rarely engage in armed interventions overseas and even when deployed overseas their units are not offensive, mostly deal in patrol and guard duty of relatively safe zones. And if they see combat its exceptional such as getting ambushed while on patrol.

The French are always intervening somewhere around the world. So these aspiring thrill seekers/warriors get to see action in the field of battle.

In contrast there are very few citizens from the UK or USA in the French Foreign Legion, because if their citizens are warriors they can just join their own armed forces and fight as those countries are also fighting all over the world.

Legionnaires are not mercenaries, there reasons for joining vary on an individual basis but material and financial remuneration is not one of them; the pay is shit.

Hell I would say that the FFL is the only alternative for these guys not resorting to mercenarism.

Lastly,

The Protocol Additional GC 1977 (APGC77) provides the most widely accepted international definition of a mercenary, though not endorsed by some countries, including the United States. The Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts, (Protocol I), 8 June 1977 states:
Art 47. Mercenaries

1. A mercenary shall not have the right to be a combatant or a prisoner of war.
2. A mercenary is any person who:
(a) is especially recruited locally or abroad in order to fight in an armed conflict;
(b) does, in fact, take a direct part in the hostilities;
(c) is motivated to take part in the hostilities essentially by the desire for private gain and, in fact, is promised, by or on behalf of a Party to the conflict, material compensation substantially in excess of that promised or paid to combatants of similar ranks and functions in the armed forces of that Party;
(d) is neither a national of a Party to the conflict nor a resident of territory controlled by a Party to the conflict;
(e) is not a member of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict; and
(f) has not been sent by a State which is not a Party to the conflict on official duty as a member of its armed forces.

In that sense, PMCs and international security firms such as Halliburton, Academi (once know as Blackwater USA), Defion, Executive Outcomes do mercenary work, just as do tuareg rebels in the Sahel and smaller local mercenary groups or freelance mercenaries in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan.

The only difference is that the bread and butter of international security firms is to do risk and threat assessment, security training and management (Around 60% of their activities), but they still provide armed personnel to either corporations, individuals, NGO's or governments (Whereas more than 60% local security firms activities consist of providing armed/unarmed personnel).

PMCs and security firms behave as privateers in current conflicts, USA/UK are just exploiting a legal loophole by not signing the United Nations Mercenary Convention which forbids mercenaries, so the government just renamed them security contractors in order to sign a contract with them without too much legal backlash, still they're not fooling anyone.

I guess the USA's motive to use extensively MPCs in Iraq/Afghanistan was to artificially reduce casualty numbers, because dead mercs don't count as US casualties and don't make it to the statistics, thus nobody cares if they die and the USA's public opinion is super sensible to casualties, 10 dead soldiers is a national tragedy...

wtf is happening in this thread.