Private Contractors and the Reconstruction of Iraq

"Christopher Kinsey is probably at the leading edge of studying this industry. He works at King’s College in London and at the Joint Services Command and Staff College, which is like the university for the armed forces. So he has unrivalled access. He wrote a very successful first book which was an overview of how private contractors started, and with this second book he is looking at the effect they are having in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. Iraq really was unlike any other war in our lifetime in that it was so astonishingly privatised. The private contractors on the ground were roughly the same size as the US army. That is a key philosophical thread for the West at the moment – the idea of contracting out force. It leads to the idea of what is the definition of a state. The book’s not a racy read but if you are intrigued by the implications of all this contracting out work it’s a very interesting read. There’s this real idea of the philosophical shift that has been going on during the last 20 years in how people manage war."