The Rise of the PMC, End of the State

I could not help myself from linking everything private security/military related in the readings to things I have read in fictional literature. It made me wonder if the writers of the novels I read were actually students of international relations. I digress.

Abrahamsen and Williams brought up some really interesting points that I wanted to hone non. They really captured the scale of the growth of private security. The fact that private security outnumbers police forces by 2:1 in the UK, 3:1 in the US, and the entire military is outnumbered in India speaks volumes about how different the system has become. Their argument, that security is increasingly beyond the state, has resonated with me. I don't think it's as doom and gloom as they predict, that those states that have delegated the "monopoly" on violence have contributed to their own demise. I think that is very true for weaker states where private military and security companies continue to grow stronger day to day,  but I don't think it means the end of states.

There's a Tom Clancy novel (not written by him, but in his name) called HAWX and it covers a topic very much like this. The gist of it is that in the near future most governments contract most of their military and security needs out to private companies. Eventually the interests of those companies diverge from those of the state and the novel climaxes with one of the largest PMCs almost successfully staging a coup against the government of the United States (thankfully stopped by some scrappy former F-16 pilots). What I enjoyed about the book and why I find it so interesting in the context of these readings is that as states delegate more and more of their authority it leads me to question: what happens when private companies, with their own interests, decide that they are in charge? It seems farfetched that a private company could ever usurp challenge the United States, but smaller, weaker states? Failed or failing states? What happens if a PMC becomes the "legitimate" owner of a state? I don't see it as likely, but I definitely see it as possible.