Imagine a force that could actively compete with NATO hanging out on the African coast. They're also big on hiring, doing or being. Sometimes they don't care about consent when they really want to do some hiring. They don't need much land, or resources, due to the insane GDP of being a global military trump card anyone can buy. Governance at all is a secondary concern, as the whole thing is a weird hybrid of a military and a corporation, and both those things can get away with a boatload of shit when they're rich.
It would never work, of course. Even if they hadn't been instantly fucked into oblivion by all the world powers running a train on them - and that's really the only way a situation like that could have played out - it couldn't have survived more than a generation or two removed from the cult of personality of Big Boss, if that. Everyone would get super rich or super dead for a little bit, though.