As much as I like this, I actively went to your TS to get mercs for a battle as a go between for another faction and Kesh told me straight up: Sorry we aren't going to put people against this faction A cause we are friends. Guess what, 6 FCC signed for the Faction A side while 1 signed up for the Faction B side but did not show up.
Based on this experience, your "merc policy" is not as "Free" as you would wish. You STILL put Diplomacy behind who you merc for over fun.
Now as for mercing in general. If you have a large portion of your clan fight for 1 side or another(by large i'll use TKOV for the example. 80 members, if 10 sign up against someone, that is a large chunk of their member base and should be constituted as a hostile action), I see no reason WHY you shouldn't consider that a hostile intent.(since roster sizes cap out at 55 i think, 1/5 of a roster being of a single clan is hostile intent)
A lot of the time, I at least listen to Kesh because he's the usually the only one who's paying attention to anything in strat. Naturally, that will favor people who Kesh favors because a lot of us really don't care who we're fighting. I mean, a lot of the clan has their own biases (Frodo easily comes to mind. I'm pretty sure he hates everyone), I for example will rarely ever sign against LLJK, but I find a lot of the time, aside from recommendations on who to fight for (Since a lot of us still like TKoV, for example, many will likely not sign against them), a lot of us simply sign for both sides to get accepted. Malicious is an easy example of this, as he routinely fought against us in strat. Blondekhan as well, because he's usually too late to be accepted because he doesn't know when battles are happening until he notices TS is mostly empty. Redarrows will fight anything...
I mean, we're all people here. Of course we're going to have our preferences. And yes, we're not at all
that neutral, but I don't think anyone here will willingly sign for somebody with the intent to sabotage them (well, I wouldn't put it past Kesh.)