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The article discusses academic literature about U.S. military privatization and the reasons behind the growing emergence in publications relating to this field. The growth of the market for private military services is attributed to the U.S.-led military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. The article attempts to explore those areas neglected by other scholarly works on the subject including the relationship between military privatization and public policy, distinguishing between economic neoliberalism and privatization, and providing an explanation of the value behind the theories presented by other articles on the topic.

The recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been characterized by the deployment of large private military forces, under contract with the US administration. The use of so-called private military corporations (PMCs) and, more generally, of mercenaries, has long attracted criticisms. This article argues that under certain conditions (drawn from the Just War tradition), there is nothing inherently objectionable about mercenarism. It begins by exposing a weakness in the most obvious justification for mercenarism, to wit, the justification from freedom of occupational choice. It then deploys a less obvious, but stronger, argument — one that appeals to the importance of enabling just defensive killings. Finally, it rebuts five moral objections to mercenarism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]