War PLC: The Rise of the New Corporate Mercenary
By Stephen Armstrong
Faber £14.99 272 pages
FT Bookshop price: £11.99

Mercenaries have always presented governments with moral and practical dilemmas. Machiavelli argued against using them, calling them “disunited, thirsty for power, undisciplined, and disloyal”, even though rulers in Renaissance Italy were dependent on them because of the weakness of their own armies. This tension between ethical niceties and pragmatic needs is powerfully presented in War Plc, a timely and absorbing study of the modern mercenary. Freelance journalist Stephen Armstrong charts the recent emergence of the private military company, and the remarkable transformation of the hired gun from freebooter to freelance contractor serving as a respectable arm of the state.