If the Reagan / Thatcher era of the 80s got us accustomed to one paramount concept, it was that of privatisation – outsourcing, selling on, hiving off – and very few things were exempt, from health-care to education, personnel to transport. We became used to the involvement of private companies in what was previously seen as the business of the state, and Stephen Armstrong’s compelling book documents the logical extension of that ethos in to the privatisation of war and armed protection, enabled by the end of the Cold War and the resulting ‘peace dividend’ that made for much smaller national armed forces.

Armstrong gives us an overview of the long history of the traditional mercenary, and points out that in the broad sweep of history, nationally homogeneous conscript armies are much less common than mercenaries in all their forms. We then get an overview of the mercenary sector in the post-WWII environment, often with the focus on Africa – Sandline, ‘arms to Africa’, the role of mercenaries in Angola and elsewhere, culminating in Simon Mann’s abortive coup plan in Equatorial Guinea.

While smaller national armies made a bigger legitimate role for the private sector in providing armed guards and convoy services, and Western governments were slowly coming to accept their possible uses, Armstrong makes a convincing case that it was the War on Terror, the American-led invasions of first Afghanistan and then Iraq, which have led to the massive growth of the industry. With the US military massively overstretched, everything that can be outsourced to a Private Military Company (PMC) has been – protecting diplomats, manning security checkpoints, guarding oil installations, even running security at the very barracks where front-line troops are quartered. Armstrong shows the underlying logic of the approach, and the circumstances that made it unavoidable, as well as documenting the key players in the market, such as Blackwater Worldwide.

He then goes on to explain the human costs of the growth of the PMCs – for the wounded contractors, and the families of those killed in action, there is often no real security net; most of all, for the victims of the excessive force sometimes used by the PMCs ‘in theatre’, there is no come-back. The most terrible incident occurred when Blackwater guards shot and killed 17 civilians in Nisour Square, Baghdad, although there was no evidence of a serious threat to their safety. The complex web of contracts used by the PMCs to circumvent legal liability is also exposed. Because this is such an up-to-date book, many of these issues are still the subject of ongoing court cases, so it does make you feel properly up-to-speed

Lastly, Armstrong explores the future of the PMCs. In one eye-opening passage, he attends a conference at which a senior Metropolitan Police officer effectively asked PMCs for thoughts on how they could provide security for the London Olympics. As he points out, the Olympics will create a need for security for sixty days, during which time the Met also have to cope with the Notting Hill Carnival, Wimbledon and all of their regular obligations. Clearly the role of the PMCs in security sense has a long way to go, and while some are pulling back from their roles on the ground in war-zones, they see a wealth of other roles, from training police forces to running prisons to guarding diplomats, not to mention corporate intelligence (I used to have one such company, Control Risks, as a client at a previous agency).

War plc is an excellent piece of ‘extended journalism’ – it feels well researched and yet extremely current, and I found it contained much food for thought. Armstrong has provided a good introduction to the sector, and manages to base his conclusions on a solid foundation of extensive research and numerous interviews. If I have a complaint, it is that while Armstrong justly criticises the excesses of the PMCs and their exemption from the rule of law, it feels like he might be putting a bit too much faith in the regular military, which after the excesses of Abu Guraib and Guantanamo Bay, the refusal of the US to sign up to the International Criminal Court, and the continuing tendency of the American air force to bomb innocent civilians, might be seen as giving them more credit than they really deserve. Nevertheless, highly recommended.

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