Private Security Contractors and New Wars

The global private security industry is expected to double in the next five years. From an industry that grossed less than fifty billion in 1990, it has grown to over 100 billion dollars today. Private security professionals number in the tens of thousands worldwide, with over ten thousand armed security contractors in Iraq today. The increasing use of these privatized former soldiers to provide defensive security, military training, intelligence, and military support - even private armies - has added a new twist to the transformation of the military currently underway. Currently, the private security industry is under intense scrutiny in Iraq, especially after significant contractor involvement in the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal.Coming to grips with the implications of the security contracting sector for the conduct of military operations requires looking at what the trends indicate on two levels: the changing realities of global violence, and the changing world of the professional soldier. This transformation in military operations is a seemingly irreversible product of more general changes in the relationship between the individual citizen and the late-modern state. "Private Security Contractors and New Wars" addresses the ambiguities of the growing use of these paramilitary forces and provides some guidance as to how our expectations about regulating this expanding 'service' industry will have to be adjusted.

ISBN 0415771714   Pages 208 ISBN13 9780415771719 (What's this?)   Volumes 001 Publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd   Weight (grammes) 453 Imprint Routledge   Published in London Format Hardback   Series title Contemporary Security Studies Publication date 25 Jan 2010   Height (mm) 234 Library of Congress HD9743   Width (mm) 156 DEWEY 355.35   Spine width (mm) 18 DEWEY edition DC22   Academic level Undergraduate, Postgraduate, Professional / Scholarly

		List of abbreviations
		Introduction		1
1		The complex identity of the PMSC		9
2		The multifaceted origins of the PMSC industry		40
3		Contracting and danger in the risk society		64
4		PMSCs and the clash of legal cultures		99
5		Frontier ethics with a cosmopolitan goal		133
		Epilogue: problems and solutions		155
		Appendices		160
		Notes		164
		Bibliography		169
		Index		183

"Carmola's discussion of the "risk culture" within which PMSCs operate is particularly insightful, as is the analysis of their origins, namely as a means to bypass the strict rules of military conduct among Western states when those states are in armed conflict with non-Western nonstate actors." - CHOICE, March 2011 "A valuable contribution to the growing literature on PMSCs." - Kathleen M. Jennings, International Peacekeeping, Vol 19, 1, January 2012

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