Private Warriors (Hardcover)

~ (Author), Daniel Burton-Rose (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Journalist Ken Silverstein delivers a broadside against the modern military-industrial complex in Private Warriors. In the post-cold-war world of rising defense budgets and arms proliferation, Silverstein finds plenty to worry about: "Former Defense Department officials serve as consultants to the arms industry, helping lobby for needless Cold War-era weapons systems and promoting greater arms sales to foreign regimes. Retired generals form private corporations that train the armies of foreign nations and encourage U.S. entanglements abroad. Arms dealers linked to U.S. intelligence agencies still trot the globe hawking their wares, sometimes in support of government operations, sometimes acting strictly as private businessmen. Intellectuals who gained their names by hyping the Soviet threat still counsel our political leaders. The advice they offered during the Cold War was of dubious value, and it has decidedly less merit today." Silverstein wisely populates his book with real-life characters such as German arms dealer Ernst Werner Glatt, Nixon- and Reagan-administration veteran Alexander Haig, and missile-defense advocate Frank Gaffney. He also has an eye for vivid anecdotes: the B-2 bomber, he notes, literally "costs more than its weight in gold." Silverstein's on-the-scene reporting includes visits to a weapons bazaar in Rio de Janeiro and a Soldier of Fortune convention in Las Vegas. At bottom, however, Private Warriors is a polemic rather than a piece of journalism; it aims to make a forceful argument against transplanting the mindset of a cold-war hawk into the security policies of the 21st century. Not everyone will be convinced--attitudes on this subject are famously inflexible--but Silverstein's portrait of the industry and people who profit from military buildups will give pause to all its readers. --John J. Miller

From Publishers Weekly

A book needs to be written on the relationship between retired military officers and the defense industries of their respective countries. A book needs to be written on think tank intellectuals who are for sale to the highest bidder when it comes to describing alarming future military scenarios and their expensive material requirements. A book needs to be written on the post-Cold War diffusion across the globe of sophisticated military technology. For some, this will be that book; others may feel it sacrifices these opportunities in favor of vignettes and frissons. Silverstein, a regular contributor to the Nation, among other journals, documents a shadowy community of freelance individuals and nongovernmental agencies that he thinks is attempting to sustain the high-profit days of the international arms market by propping up Cold War antagonism; by fomenting new tensions, in particular with China; and by insisting on "military revolutions" that Silverstein dismisses as exercises in marketing armaments by generating anxieties. To make his case, he casts a wide, often ragged, net, here equating government support for arms export with private gunrunning, there reaching into the 1950s and '60s for material on former Nazi soldiers who made postwar careers as arms brokers. The best chapter addresses the growing "privatization" of conflict by the emergence of "security consultants," firms willing to provide training, technical expertise and sometimes fighting men to government and businesses. To some readers, Silverstein's criticism of this manifestation will take too much precedence over the reasons for its appearance and its appeal. For others, merely raising the issue and provoking discussion will give this volume value enough.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Verso (July 27, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1859847560
• ISBN-13: 978-1859847565
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,214,505 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars War, Incorporated, June 14, 2001

By	daibhidh "daibhidh" (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews

Ken Silverstein's "Private Warriors" is an excellent resource -- I wish we had more journalists like him, willing to delve deep into a story and present just the facts, and leave it to the reader to connect the dots. Silverstein doesn't preach: he just offers an incredible amount of information -- all but the most diehard reactionary will find it persuasive.

He names names, and provides an exhaustive account of the ongoing American policy of permanent military mobilization, which was conveniently masked during the Cold War but which continues to grow after the death of Soviet Communism.

The book is broken into six chapters, each exploring a different avenue of the war industry -- from ... arms dealers to private mercenary companies, to the cynical use of military consultants to evade public accountability and oversight and, of course, Star Wars (these days referred to as the Ballistic Missile Defense).

What I was struck with on reading this book is how cynical and amoral the participants are -- they may be flag-waving Americans, but the brotherhood of warmongers really transcends nationality, which is probably a sign of the changing times. It's frightening and infuriating when you see the level of corruption at work, here, and the incredible success achieved by these individuals, and the degree of networking they engage in to ensure that American policy remains firmly locked on a wartime footing.

The only drawbacks I saw in this book was there was so much information presented, it was a little hard to keep track of all of the players -- I would have liked to see some graphs or lists to illustrate some of the points Silverstein enumerated. Also, I thought there ought to be a concluding chapter to the book, to sort of wrap everything up.

Get this book if you want to get a sense of why the "peace dividend" was a short-lived concept (I recall it being talked about for about two weeks, after the collapse of the USSR); I recommend it as a gift for anybody who wants a sense of what's wrong in American policy, and also for anybody too enamored of the status quo.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A skeptic turned believer, November 8, 2000

By	Amos Rehm (Louisville, KY) - See all my reviews

As a former (low-ranking) officer in the military, I was skeptical about the premise of this book. But reading the first chapter, standing up in Midnight Special, got me hooked. This is a well argued, impeccably researched book. Though I think some of the arguments are overstated, the bulk of "Warriors" confirmed suspicions I didn't even know I had, and resonated with my fellow officers when I brought it up with them. Clearly written without being condescending. A good read for anybody trying to understand the wars popping up around the globe.

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Classic Investigative Reporting, August 10, 2000

By	Jeffrey St. Clair (Oregon City, OR USA) - See all my reviews

You thought that the end of the Cold War meant a slow down in the arms trade? Well, think again. The Defense budget remains as bloated as ever and the arms trade--once under a modicum of federal oversight--has gone global (and private), feeding on (and promoting) regional strife and bloodshed from Sierra Leone and Nigeria to Sri Lanka and Colombia. And who are the profiteers? The weapons companies and their seamy roster of brokers: CIA retirees, former Pentagon flacks, aging Nazis (protected from war crimes trials by going to work for US intelligence agencies), political appointees and other downright slimy operators, from Al "I'm in Control" Haig to Frank Gaffney, the high priest of Star Wars. Ken Silverstein, one of the nation's most fearless reporters, goes face-to-face with these new merchants of death and shines a piercing light on their dark and frightening world. With Private Warriors Silverstein revives and perfects a style of investigative reporting that surpasses Jack Anderson at his best.