Step into the world of the Private Security Contractor - a stock market-listed corporate version of the mercenary.
No longer Dogs of War running ragtag armies in sly deals for mineral rights, the new breed of private soldiers operate their million dollar contracts from executive boardrooms in London, Washington, Paris and Oslo. Whether they're ex-Special Forces, CIA spooks or Foreign Legionnaires, you'll find them exchanging gunfire with insurgents in Baghdad, patrolling government buildings in Afghanistan, spying on environmental protestors or protecting shipping in pirate waters.
After the lucrative contracts of the War on Terror, their plans are even more ambitious - to offer governments and corporations discrete and well-trained private armies. WIth democracies unwilling to see their children die in dusty foreign lands, these corporate soldiers, are part of the last great outsourcing - the privatisation of war. This book examines how we got here, how these companies operate and how close we are to letting them run our battlefields.
