Lethal Regulation: State-Corporate Crime and the United Kingdom Government's New Mercenaries

Abstract

Markets for private military security are enjoying a period of sustained growth, during which there has been a repackaging of 'mercenary outfits' and 'private armies' as legitimate, fully incorporated private military companies (PMCS). This paper presents a critique of the dominant view of the new mercenaries and examines the regulation of private military security currently being proposed by the United Kingdom government, arguing that its purpose should be understood as the facilitation rather than the restraint of those markets. States are playing a formative role in the expansion of private military markets. In contrast to the dominant themes of the literature on globalization, the emergence of those markets should be understood as an expansion rather than a diminution of the coercive and violent capacities of states. Western states are facilitating new modes of delivering terror and violence that are also likely to increase, rather than reduce, the incidence of state-corporate crimes.