... it as a “comprehensive and sustainable commitment” in defense of American vital national interests. The president and his security team seek to overturn policies that have produced only failed states, Islamist-fed chaos, growing terrorist attacks in ... ... of All Bombs” (MOAB, or Massive Ordnance Air Blast), the largest conventional bomb in the US arsenal, on ISIS fighters in Afghanistan on April 14. Facing what Mattis has called a “clear and present danger” from North Korea, Trump’s team did not ...
... seem analytically distorting, for example, to think of a Colombian national working for an American PMSC in Afghanistan as anything other than a mercenary. This example is neither fictitious, nor rare. As of July 2013, 83% of the private military and security contractors working for the US Department of Defense in Iraq, and 10% in Afghanistan, are third-country nationals, i.e. neither US citizens, nor local nationals. The fact that a corporate business entity – equally profit-seeking – intermediates between the individual pecuniary motives of its employees and the perhaps ...
... to their own judgment. From representing only 1% of the military personnel operating in various conflict zones in the early 1990’s, it was roughly believed that their number had increased to 1 out of 4 soldiers in 2011 in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. The growth of the private military/security industry demonstrates a gradual diffusion of the control over the use of force to a diversity of non-state actors. This departure from state monopoly involves a multiplicity of implications, ranging from the most theoretical and philosophical ...
