Money for Mayhem: Mercenaries, Private Military Companies, Drones, and the Future of War

Security consultant Arduino debuts with an exhaustive examination of governments’ increasing reliance on mercenaries, arguing that a new “anarchy” is taking hold internationally. “Buying a force for hire is not [necessarily] a guarantee [of] the desired outcomes,” Arduino warns, cautioning that mercenaries see both victory and defeat as “the end of business”—and a risk to their lucrative employment. He covers major state players in the mercenary market, including the U.S., China, Russia, and Turkey, and describes the typical uses for mercenaries, including operating as private security contractors, aiding citizens during natural disasters, and maintaining “plausible deniability” in foreign military engagements. Arduino discusses each country’s history with mercenaries, assesses the strengths and weaknesses of the available troops, and highlights unique issues such as China’s problem with impostors—mercenaries who falsely identify themselves as former Gurkhas or Mossad agents. (Arduino compares their prevalence to the country’s similar proliferation of knock-off luxury goods.) He also addresses new developments in warfare, mainly cyberattacks and drone assassinations, that further obfuscate just who is fighting whom, and which are increasingly outsourced to contractors. While the prose is somewhat stilted, the subject matter is disturbing and unusual enough to hold the reader’s interest. Readers will be intrigued to learn about this understudied phenomenon. (Oct.)