Author: Armin Krishnan
ISBN No: 9780 7546 7167
Review date: 16/12/2025
No of pages: 220
Publisher: Ashgate
Year of publication: 11/09/2012
Brief:
Why have the most modern armed forces come increasingly to rely on private companies for nearly everything they do?
So asks an academic in a study of the privatisation of the defence sector.
It’s due to technology, argues Armin Krishnan of Salford University in War as Business. Technology can have a life of its own, and maybe unintended consequences. Weapons and logistics, and the computer software behind them, have become so complicated, the armed forces cannot keep up and have to employ contractors. As he writes, problems can abound: can the military trust the contractor? what’s the legal status? is training compatible? and who takes orders from who, out of the infantry private and the former colonel now running a private security company (PSC)? Rather overlooked in this high-powered book is the public relations of politics – a government at war can lower casualties among its soldiers if it can pay for contractors to guard the embassies, convoys and airports. Then there’s the sheer practicality: given a chronic shortage of friendly boots on the ground in places like Iraq, aid charities, oil firms and so on must turn to private security … or else what?!
