Money for Mayhem

Informationen zum Autor By Alessandro Arduino Klappentext The way war is waged is evolving quickly igniting the rise of private military contractors that offer military-style services as part of their core business model. Arduino unpacks the tradeoffs involved when conflict is increasingly waged not by national armies, but by professional outfits that thrive on chaos. This book charts the rise of private military actors from Russia, China, and the Middle East using primary source data, in-person interviews, and field research amongst operations in conflict zones around the world. Individual stories narrated by mercenaries, military trainers, security businessmen, hackers, and drone pilots will be used to introduce the beginning of each chapter. The book ends by considering today s trajectories in the deployment of mercenaries by state, corporations, or even terrorist organizations and what it will mean for the future of conflict. The book follows private security contractors that take on missions in different countries with a variety of challenges. These include a former Singaporean commando working with a Chinese company in Kabul, a former British Royal Marine leading a Kurdish private military company in Erbil protecting BP s oil, and a former Russian Spetsnaz defending commercial vessels from the Somali coast to the Gulf of Guinea. Aside from the human component, the book closely follows the trends in the adoption of unmanned lethal weapons and it peeks into the future of weapons that can decide autonomously to kill humans. One chapter is dedicated to loitering munitions, better known as suicide drones, used by Israel and the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard for remote-controlled assassination. ISIS s reengineered Chinese DJI commercial drones that are used for propaganda operations or as advanced artillery spotters complete the picture of the range of threats the world will routinely face in less than a decade. First-hand data and intimate knowledge of the actors involved in the market for force allow a fully grounded narrative with personal input. Through this prism, the reader gains an understanding of the human, security, and political risks that are part of this industry. The book specifically reveals the risk that unaccountable mercenaries pose in increasing the threshold for conflict, the threat to traditional military forces, the corruption in political circles, and the rising threat of proxy conflicts in the US rivalry with China and Russia. In a nutshell, the book gazes into the crystal ball to forecast what the future might look like in a world ruled by private armies. ...

Auteur

Dr. Alessandro Arduino has two decades of experience in China encompassing risk analysis and crisis management, focusing on Belt & Road Initiative security, cyber security, private military and security companies, combat UAVs, and Chinäs political economy in Africa, Middle East, and Central Asia. He is a consultant to several organizations on security, risk assessment, and mitigation. Arduino is a principal research fellow at the Middle East Institute, National University of Singapore, co-director of the Security & Crisis Management International Centre at the Shanghai Academy of Social Science, and an affiliate at the Lau China Institute, King s College London.

Arduino is the author of several books, including Securing the Belt and Road Initiative and Chinäs Private Army. Protecting the New Silk Road, and he has published papers and commentaries in various journals in Italian, English and Chinese languages. He has been appointed Knight of the Order of the Italian Star by the President of the Italian Republic.

Texte du rabat

War is no longer waged only by national militaries. We are seeing a shift to a new anarchy where might makes right, but with new tools: private intelligence outfits, rent-an-army soldiers, and cyber mercenaries for hire. These groups profit from chaos and uncertainty, while accountability, transparency, and peace seem harder than ever to achieve.