The Middle East: The world’s playground for the privatization of war

By James M. Dorsey

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Hello and welcome to the Turbulent World with me, James M. Dorsey, as your host.

The United States had no idea that its employment in the 2000s of private military companies. like Blackwater in Iraq, would institutionalize and legitimize mercenaries, one of the world’s oldest professions.

Nor did the United States envision it would create a template for the outsourcing of the state’s monopoly on violence that country. Countries such as Russia, Turkey, China, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates would adapt often with devastating consequences.

Even so, US President Donald Trump took conceptualizing military force as a commodity rather than a tool of defense and statecraft to an extreme in 2019 when he made retaliation for Yemeni Houthis rebel…