The privatized military industry...longish piece, for more see his new book. For a counterpoint, see Ken Silverstein book from Verso.
>...The contrasting experiences in Sierra Leone between the military provider firm Executive Outcomes and the U.N.’s peacekeeping operation are the most often cited example of privatization’s promise. In 1995, the Sierra Leone government was near defeat from the ruf, a nefarious rebel group whose habit of chopping off the arms of civilians as a terror tactic made it one of the most truly evil groups of the late twentieth century. Supported by multinational mining interests, the government hired the private military firm, made up of veterans from the South African apartheid regime’s elite forces, to help rescue it. Deploying a battalion-sized unit of assault infantry (numbering in the low hundreds), who were supported by firm-manned combat helicopters, light artillery, and a few armored vehicles, Executive Outcomes was able to defeat the ruf in a span of weeks. Its victory brought enough stability to allow Sierra Leone to hold its first election in over a decade. After its contract termination, however, the war restarted. In 1999 the U.N. was sent in. Despite having a budget and personnel size nearly 20 times that of the private firm, the U.N. force took several years of operations, and a rescue by the British military, to come close to the same results. -- Michael Pugliese