The fourth episode, on the difference between Russian mercenary-like organizations and Western PMSCs. My guest is Dr. Jovana J. Ranito, Post Doctoral Fellow with the University of Porto, Portugal. Her most recent book is Regulating US private security contractors, published by Palgrave Macmillan: New York. I strongly recommend reading that book if you want to get a pretty good idea about what regulations exist that cover private military and security companies and how they came into existence.
I know that all four podcasts so far have dealt with Russian private military companies in one way or another. Bear with me for a couple more and then I will go back to top level on warfare in the modern era and how little has changed in what we do — just how we do it. Even there it is just old wine in new wineskins.
Nonetheless, the privatization of many military support functions and the potential commercialization of war is a subject that I will come back to over and over. Contractor support of the military is both changing warfare AND a return to pre-20th century methods. Almost every aspect of modern war involves contractor support. The surprising thing to me is not how prevalent contractors are, it is how few people understand that there is nothing new in this at all.